INTO THE * 
»JAWS of DEAT 

JACK O'BRIEN 





Class _JB_Jl4_0 

Book 

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COPWilGHT DEPOSm 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 




O'BRIEN AND MACDONALD AFTER THEY HAD REACHED 
ENGLAND 



INTO THE JAWS 
OF DEATH 



BY 

PRIVATE JACK O'BRIEN 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1919 



.0-2-, 



COPTRISBT, 1910, BT 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Ino. 



'itP 3u .'919 



©Ci.A530995 



To LiEUT.-CoLONEL J. F. L. Embuhy and the 
Officers and Men of the 28th Northwest 
Battalion, I respectfully dedicate this book 



FOREWORD 

Having been asked by the Author of this Book, 
No. 73,194 Private Jack O'Brien of the 28th 
Northwest Battalion, to write a few words as an 
introduction to the story which he is placing 
before the public, it gives me much pleasure to 
do so. 

The 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade raised 
and organized from the four western provinces 
of Canada has done its share and at the time of 
writing it is still doing its share in the field 
against the common enemy. The 28th North- 
west Battalion, originally under the Command 
of Lieut.-Col. J. F. L. Embury, C.M.G., has taken 
its share in all the engagements in which the 
6th Canadian Infantry Brigade took part, in- 
cluding St. Eloi, Hooge, three engagements on 
the Somme, 15th September, 26th September, 
and 1st October, 1916, as well as the general 
engagements of Vimy Ridge, Fresnoy, Lens 
on the 21st August, 1917, and Passchendaele, 
and in each of these engagements, alongside the 
remaining Battalions of the Brigade — namely, 
the 27th City of Winnipeg Battalion, 29th Van- 

vii 



viii FOREWORD 

couver Battalion, and the 31st Alberta Bat- 
talion — never failed in gaining all of the ob- 
jectives which had been set for the Brigade to 
carry. Whenever any special raids to obtain 
information and identifications were called for, 
the 28th Northwest Battalion invariably volun- 
teered for such duty, and their efforts were 
always crowned with success. In fact the 
record of the Brigade throughout the campaign 
has been an outstanding one, and the various 
matters which Private Jack O'Brien refers to 
in his book will be of the greatest interest to 
all members of the Brigade, past and present, 
as well as to the general public in Western 
Canada. 

The feat accomplished by this young soldier 
in escaping from the Germans, whilst held as 
a prisoner of war, is in itself worthy of special 
notice and he was only successful in his third 
attempt. His conduct and record in the field 
is one to be proud of, and I have no hesitation 
in introducing him to the readers of his most 
interesting book. As a soldier he has done his 
duty and is deserving of every support in the 
circulation of his war story. 

H. D. B. Ketchen, 
Brig.-Gen. comm'd'g 6th Can. Inf. Brig. 
10th April, 1918 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

CHAPTER I 

**Well, boy, how did you do it?" ^'What are 
the prison camps like?" ''Are the Grermans 
as cruel as they are painted?" These are the 
questions that I have been asked thousands of 
times since coming home. I have answered 
them from scores of platforms, for all kinds 
of Red Cross organizations; and now I have 
been persuaded to try and put my answer on 
paper — and if when I have finished, there are 
a few points cleared up that you have been 
wondering, and perhaps worrying about, I 
shall feel repaid for the writing. They say that 
"the pen is mightier than the sword," but my 
experiences of the last ten years have given me 
much more practice with the latter than with 
the former. I shall not attempt a flowery 
story, nor exaggerate anything to make it 
sound big, but I shall, as they say in the Court, 
tell "the truth, and nothing but the truth." 

1 



2 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

My story begins when this war broke out in 
August, 1914. I was working with a survey 
party at the time not far from Fernie, British 
Columbia. I remember the day that I made 
up my mind to enlist. I had just decided the 
question when along came my chum Stevens, 
and I said, ''Well, I'm jumping the job this 
morning, Steve." He said, ''Why? What the 
devil is eating you now? Don't you know when 
you are well off?" I said, "Yes, Steve, I do; 
but it is like this — ever since you and I went 
to town the other day I have been thinking 
this thing over." "Thinking what?" "Why, 
about the war, of course — I can't get it out of 
my head. There is going to be the devil of a 
scrap over there — and say, boy! I've got to get 
into it! Wlien I hear of what Germany is 
doing to poor little Belgium it makes my blood 
boil — I have worked with the Germans, and I 
have a little idea of what it would mean to 
turn the world over to them — so I'm off to 
draw my time. ' ' Well, when I came back from 
the boss's cabin, I found Steve packing up, and 
I said, "Why, what's the matter, Steve?" He 
said, "Oh hell! if you're going, I'm going too;" 
so we started off together. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 3 

We had a twelve-mile hike to the nearest 
town, and that night we took the train for 
Winnipeg. We stayed off in Moose Jaw to see 
some boys that we knew, and of course we told 
them that we were on our way to enlist. To 
our surprise we found that they were planning 
to join a company that was being recruited in 
Moose Jaw, and they urged us to sign up with 
them. We thought it would be nice to be with 
some one we knew, so one morning we lined 
up with three or four hundred others to be 
examined for the Army. They had room for 
only two hundred and fifty men, and as we 
stood in line we looked around to size up the 
bunch and see what our chances were for get- 
ting in. They were a husky-looking lot, and 
all were eager to go. I remember one big fel- 
low near the end of the line offered me five 
-dollars for my place. I said, "Go to hell with 
your five dollars." Afterwards in the trenches, 
when we were knee-deep in mud and the big 
shells were bursting around us, he could have 
had my place and welcome. Well, we were all 
taken on, and we got our first taste of drilling 
and marching. For about a week we were 
marched around the streets of Moose Jaw — 



4 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

flags were flying — ^bands playing — and we were 
the centre of interest. The last night we were 
there, the city tendered us a banquet and an 
old South African veteran gave us a farewell 
speech. Among other things, he said, ''Well, 
boys, you belong to the Army now [they didn't 
let us forget it very long]. The first thing 
you must learn is discipline," and he gave us 
a long speech on that. Then he went on: ''The 
next thing is cleanliness. I suppose you have 
been taught as I was that 'cleanliness is next 
to godliness'; but in the Army you will find 
that it works pretty much the other way — 
godliness is next to cleanliness." This is all 
I remember of the old soldier's speech, and 
afterwards, believe me, I found that he was 
right; in the trenches cleanliness is quite as 
difficult as godliness. 

Well, early next morning we took the train 
for Winnipeg, and there was a big crowd to 
see us off, for most of the boys who had joined 
up had their homes in Moose Jaw. I didn't 
know any one, and I was not paying much at- 
tention to the crowd when a funny thing hap- 
pened. I was feeling a bit lonely seeing all the 
other boys being made a fuss over, when sud- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 5 

denly a nice-looking young girl loomed up in 
front of me, and a joyful voice said, ''Why, 
Harry, here you are; I have been looking all 
over for you.'' Now, my name was not Harry, 
but when she lifted her face to be kissed, why 
I tried to do as the real Harry would have 
done. Perhaps I did not succeed, for somehow 
she realized her mistake and she did not seem 
half as well pleased over it as I was. Finally 
the train pulled out amid the cheers of the 
crowd, and the boys who were leaving home 
and friends looked just a wee bit quiet and sad, 
but soon they recovered their spirits, and we 
had a jolly time playing cards and getting 
acquainted. They were all strangers to me, 
and we were destined to go through experi- 
ences that drew us closer together than broth- 
ers, but I didn't know it then, so I sat there 
and tried to imagine what they were like, and 
the opinions I formed were far from right in 
the light of events that followed. I have 
learned now how foolish it is to judge a man 
by his appearance. It was only a twelve-hour 
trip to Winnipeg, and when we got there we 
found a band to meet us. We were marched 
through the streets, and though we stuck out 



6 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

our chests and tried to remember all that had 
been told us about marching, I fear we made 
a poor impression. We still wore our ordinary 
clothes and only the badges on our arms 
marked us as would-be soldiers. 

After about an hour's march we were taken 
to a large frame barrack known as the Horse 
Show Building. This place had been built for 
a skating rink and was never intended as a 
dwelling-place for men. In the winter the 
water poured from the frost-lined roof, and 
for a long time we had no floor. We slept on 
ticks filled with straw, and these were soaked 
every day — ^we were almost drowned out. 
There was an old piano in the building, and 
every morning we were awakened by a wag in 
the crowd playing ''Pull for the shore, sailor." 
The boys would all take it up, and in a few 
minutes every one would be singing at the top 
of their voices. This put us in good humour 
for the day. 

We were not the only ones in the building; 
other companies had come in from the West, 
and when our numbers had reached the 1,100 
mark we were formed into what was known 
as the 28th Northwest Battalion. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 7 

Now, it is not my intention to give a detailed 
account of our training. We were like every 
other new battalion, perfectly green in the art 
of soldiering, awkward in the use of our 
hands and feet, but strong in our determina- 
tion to make good as a battalion. Especially 
were we anxious to please our commanding 
officer. Just to give you an idea of how green 
I was, let me tell you of my first meeting with 
our 0. C, Colonel Embury. I was lounging 
around the guardroom one day when the 
Sergeant asked me to take some papers to the 
Orderly Sergeant upstairs. Now, my tunic 
was unfastened, my belt loose, and my cap on 
the back of my head, but it never occurred to 
me to fix myself before going up. I took the 
papers and went up three steps at a time. 
When I reached the orderly-room I walked 
in, and said, ''Who is the Orderly Sergeant 
here?" A voice from the corner of the room 
said, ''Here, lad," and I started in his direc- 
tion when another voice spoke up and said, 
"Look here, sonny — " I turned around and 
found myself looking into the genial fatherly 
face of Colonel Embury. I was too much sur- 
prised and dismayed to even attempt a salute, 



8 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

and the Colonel, instead of calling me down, 
just smiled and said: ''Young man, supposing 
you go out into the hall, fasten up your tunic, 
tighten your belt, and put your cap on prop- 
erly; then come to the door and knock. When 
you get an answer, walk in and salute, and see 
how much smarter and better it will look.'* 
You bet I felt cheap, and almost any sized 
hole would have been large enough for me just 
then. But I went out and did as I was told, 
and when I came back he answered my salute 
and smilingly said, ''Now, that is fine," and 
went on with his work. What wouldn't a boy 
do for an officer who used him like that? 

It was hard for us boys who had been on 
our own hook for several years to get used to 
the discipline of the Army. We were used ta 
doing exactly as we liked, and the unquestion- 
ing obedience demanded did not come easy. 
Gee, but it used to hurt to take a "call-down" 
from a petty officer without having a chance 
to reply or even to show what we felt in our 
faces, and when he had said everything he 
could think of we had to touch our cap and 
say "Yes, Sir!" I assure you, very often we 
felt like saying something entikely different. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 9 

Training in the open with the thermometer 
ranging anywhere between 25 and 40 below 
zero is no fun. We were taught to shoot, 
march, skirmish and drill, and we also learned 
the art of ''old soldiering," which means the 
art of being able to dodge anything in the 
shape of work. By the way, they have ^ fancy 
name for work in the Army — they call it 
''Fatigue," but when you come to do it it's 
just the same as the common variety spelled 
with four letters. We did not get meals at 
barracks, but took them in a restaurant down- 
town — and rising at 6 a.m. on a bitterly cold 
winter's morning and having to walk a mile to 
breakfast was not always pleasant. Some- 
times we would break away and take a street- 
car, till an order was issued forbidding our 
doing it. However, one very cold morning fol- 
lowing a heavy fall of snow we plodded our 
way downtown; our new uniforms with their 
unlined greatcoats (minus the cozy fur collars 
such as civilians wore) did not keep out more 
than a quarter of the cold, the rest went 
through us. Our caps were wedge-shaped af- 
fairs of imitation black fur, and on mild days 
we felt very smart in them, but when it was 



10 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

forty below and Jack Frost was on a still hunt 
for every exposed portion of our body, a cap 
that would not be coaxed down to meet our 
collars was a fit object for our worst language. 
Well, on this particular morning every one 
got half frozen going down, and after break- 
fast no one felt like walking home. About half 
of the boys ''fell out" and took the street-car. 
I got on a car that was pretty well filled with 
our lads, and we were having a jolly time 
when the car stopped and in walked our 0. C. 
Several of the boys jumped up to offer their 
seat, but the Colonel smiled and said, ''Never 
mind, boys," and continued to stand at the 
back of the car. We were pretty quiet, for we 
hated to be caught disobeying orders, and 
especially did we hate being found out by our 
0. C. Well, he got off the car before we did, 
and we did not see him again till the next 
parade. Then when we were lined up Colonel 
Embury read out the rule forbidding us to 
break ranks — we were wondering how many 
days C. B. we would get — when the 0. C. looked 
around with a smile and said, "Well, boys, I'll 
let you off this time, I didn't feel much like 
walking myself." One of the boys dug me in 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 11 

the ribs and whispered, ''Some scout, eh?" It 
was little things like this that won the hearts 
of ''his boys," as he always called us, and so 
far from spoiling discipline it made us put up 
with any discomforts for the sake of pleasing 
him. 

But before going any farther I wish to ex- 
plain what C. B. means. It is the favourite 
mode of punishment in the Army and is served 
out for ahnost all offences or "crimes," as 
they are called — the only variation being in the 
length of time given. "C. B." is "confined to 
barracks" and having to answer a bugle call 
every half-hour, after the battalion is dis- 
missed. The object of answering this bugle call 
is to let the powers that be know that you are 
still there. In the Army it is known as "De- 
faulters," but we named it the "Angel Call." 
There was usually one or more of our little 
circle answering it, and the favourite crimes 
were smoking on parade, staying out without a 
pass, coming home "oiled," and staying in bed 
after reveille in the morning; the last-named 
was a favourite one of mine, and I escaped 
punishment for quite a while, but the old say- 
ing "The pitcher that goes oft to the well is 



12 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

sure to get broken at last" was true in my 
case. I had formed the habit of lying in bed 
and reading the paper for about half an hour 
after reveille, and it always made the Sergeant 
mad. However, so far he had not reported 
me; but this morning, after about twenty-five 
minutes of stolen comfort, the Sergeant said, 
"Now, look here, O'Brien, if you are not out 
of bed in three minutes I'll have you up before 
the Major." I looked, listened, and pulling 
out my watch continued reading. Exactly on 
the three minutes I jumped out, but the boys 
were all laughing and the Sergeant got mad 
and had me *' pinched"; so at 9 a.m. I was 
brought up on the ''carpet" before the Major. 
I was looking the picture of innocence, and I 
had a chum outside to prove that I was out 
of bed three minutes after the Sergeant's 
warning. Well, the Sergeant didn't press the 
charge very much, and the Major asked me how 
long it was after reveille when I got up. I 
said it was five minutes anyway, and I had 
them arguing whether it was five or ten min- 
utes (it was really half an hour), when the 
officer said, ''O'Brien, have you any wit- 
nesses?" I said, "Yes, Sir, Private Gam- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 13 

mon." Officer: ''Private Gammon, step for- 
ward. How long after reveille did O'Brien lie 
in bed?" ''Fifteen minutes, Sir," said Gam- 
mon, and looked at me as though he were doing 
me a great favour. "Five days C. B.," said 
the Major; "right about turn, dismiss." Now, 
believe me, what I said to that boy wouldn't 
look well in print. No more "witnesses" for 
me — like the darky who was brought up before 
the judge for stealing chickens. He protested 
his innocence, and the judge said, "Pete, have 
you any witnesses?" The old man answered, 
"No, Sir, I never steals chickens 'fore wit- 
nesses." In the future I would follow my old 
schoolmaster's advice; he said, "My boy, 
never tell a lie; but if you do happen to tell 
one, make it a good one and stick to it." I 
haven't always been able to live up to the first 
part, but when I fell down on that the latter 
half came in handy. This was my first crime, 
but it wasn't by any means my last. I remem- 
ber one day in the early spring the battalion 
was out doing some skirmishing, and somehow 
three of us got separated from tlie others. In 
looking for our company we came across an 
inviting-looking spot, and we sat down to have 



14 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

a rest. Smoking and telling stories made the 
time pass quickly, and when we came to look 
for the battalion it had gone home. We hiked 
for home as fast as our legs could carry us 
and got in about an hour late. Next morning 
we were paraded before the Major, and he 
listened to our story but evidently didn't sym- 
pathize with our love for nature and gave us 
seven days C. B. I thought the punishment 
rather stiff, but the old Major had it in for 
me. A few days before, when we were on 
parade, the old Major kept our platoon drilling 
after the others had gone in, and all the boys 
were sore. He gave us an order, and one of 
the boys near me said in a loud undertone, 
*'Go to hell, you spindle-legged old crow." The 
Major heard it; he turned quickly and looked 
in our direction and caught me laughing, so 
he felt pretty sure that it was I who had made 
the remark; so when he got a chance to get 
even, he soaked it to me. 

However, two can play at that game, and 
my chance came a few nights later; I was on 
sentry duty and the old Major was acting as 
orderly officer. He was always spying on us 
boys, and about 2 a.m. on the coldest nights 



INTO THE JAWS OF, DEATH 15 

he would make the round of the guards to be 
sure that we were all at our posts. This was 
not done by the other officers, and naturally 
we resented it, so when the boy on the next 
beat gave me the tip that the old boy was com- 
ing I stood in close to the wall and waited — • 
as he turned the corner, stealing along like a 
cat, I sprang out with my bayonet at his chest, 
and in a voice loud enough to be heard ten 
blocks away shouted ''Halt!" Old ''Spindle- 
legs" threw up his hands, gasped like a fish, 
and it seemed half a minute before he whis- 
pered "Orderly officer." Of course I lowered 
my rifle with a fine show of respect, but he 
didn't lose any time asking what my orders 
were for the night; he beat it for the orderly- 
room as fast as his trembling legs could carry 
him. He took it for granted that we were 
very much on guard. The other guard 
and I almost had a fit laughing, and it was 
as much as we could do to face him next 
day. 

Little things like this relieved the monotony 
of the days that otherwise were very much 
alike. We were drilled into shape and finally 
we came to take pleasure in doing things in 



16 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

the sharp brisk manner they required and in 
making as good a showing as possible — 
everything was for the honour of the battalion, 
and woe betide any one who was slovenly in 
his dress or who bungled his marching. 

But we would have had a pretty lonely 
winter if it had not been for the great kind- 
ness shown us by some of the Winnipeg 
churches and also by individual ladies. Chief 
among these, I would like to take the liberty 
of mentioning Lady Nanton; she was the 
guardian angel of the 28th; the billiard room 
of her beautiful home was thrown open for 
our use every night in the week and a lunch 
was served to as many boys as cared to go. It 
was through the efforts of Lady Nanton that a 
smoking-room was erected for our benefit, for 
we were not allowed to smoke in barracks. I 
received parcels from her when I was a pris- 
oner of war in Germany, and I leave you to im- 
agine how much they were appreciated then; 
and now that the 28th boys are coming back 
wounded and broken in health it is Lady 
Nanton that still acts as guardian angel and 
gets everything possible for them. 

But to go back to my story. We had been 



INTO THE 3'AWS OF DEATH 17] 

in training for about six months and the Army 
life had done a great deal for us. The city 
was full of soldiers ; new battalions were bein^ 
formed all the time, and we felt quite like old 
veterans. We were ''fed up" with marchings 
around the city on parade, and we longed to< 
get into the real fighting. For my part, I was. 
heartily sick of the whole thing, and all that 
made it bearable was the close friendship I 
had formed with some of the boys in my 
platoon; about a dozen of them were my close 
friends. I shall name a few of these, so that 
you may recognize them when they appear 
farther on in my story; there were **Bink,*' 
Steve, Mac, Bob, Tom, Jack, Scottie, and also 
our "dear old Chappie"; the last-named was 
one of those quiet-going Englishmen who al- 
ways mean what they say and who invariably 
addressed every one as ''my deah chappie,'* 
but he was a good old scout and everybody 
liked him. Our Sergeant, known among the 
boys as "Yap," is another interesting charac- 
ter; his heart was the biggest thing about him 
and his voice came next. If he wanted you 
to do anything he spoke loud enough to be 
heard a mile away; if you didn't do as he 



18 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

ordered, you could never bring in the excuse of 
not having heard. Then there was our Cor- 
poral, who got the name of "Barbed-wire 
Pete," so called because when the order came 
to grow moustaches his attempt looked like a 
barbed-wire entanglement. Now for our Lance 
Corporal, who when he got to France was 
known as ''Flare-pistol Bill." He early de- 
veloped a mania for shooting up flares in the 
front-line trench at night. We had two Yan- 
kees in our bunch — ''Uncle Sam," who was 
the oldest man in the platoon, and "Baldy," 
who only wore a fringe of hair. One day in 
the trenches one of the boys noticed Baldy 
scratching his head on a spot where there was 
still a little hair, and he said, "Hey, Baldy, 
chase him out into the open; you'll have a 
better chance to catch him there." Now, I 
realize that this bunch of boys may sound very 
commonplace to the average reader, but we 
went through more than one hell together and 
I found them white clear through, and heroes 
every one of them. They included farmers, 
firemen, business men, university men, hoboes, 
and socialists. Some mixture ! — but it was out 
of this kind of stuff that our Canadian Army 




28th battalion leaving WINNIPEG ON THE 27TH 
OF MAY, 1915 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 19 

was made, and I am not ashamed of their 
record. 

Now that I have introduced you to some of 
my friends, I will go back to the time when 
we left Winnipeg. After many false rumours, 
at last the day came when we were to start. 
On the 26th of May, 1915, the order came out 
that we were to entrain the following morning 
— ^we were all confined to barracks and every 
one was crazy with joy — we hurried through 
our packing, then we sat around all night, 
singing, telling yarns, and trying to put in the 
time till morning. Early next day we were 
marched to the station, and though for obvious 
reasons our going had not been advertised, 
hundreds of friends were there to see us off. 
They loaded us with candy, fruit, smokes, and 
magazines, and I don't think a happier bunch 
ever left Winnipeg. The train trip was very 
uneventful. We ate and played cards most of 
the day. This was varied by an occasional 
route march around some town on the way. 
When we reached Montreal we were reviewed 
by the Duke of Connaught, and as soon as this 
was over they marched us down to our boat. 
After locating our berths we thought we had 



20 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

nothing to do but go out and do the city. My 
chum and I made our way down to the gang- 
way and there found our way barred by a 
sentry who said, '* Nobody allowed off the 
ship." We were terribly disappointed, but we 
had learned not ''to reason why" in the Army, 
so we went to the other end of the ship. Here 
we found another boat drawn up alongside, and 
as there was no one in sight we boarded her. 
From here we had no trouble getting ashore, 
and away we went uptown — ''stolen pleasure 
is the sweetest kind" — and we had no end of 
a time for a few hours. We hiked back and 
got to the ship just in time to turn in with the 
other boys ; no one had missed us for a wonder, 
and everything was all right. Next morning 
we awoke to find ourselves slipping down the 
broad St. Lawrence. Our voyage lasted ten 
days, and it sure was "some" trip. The 
weather was perfect and we had all kinds of 
sport, wrestling, boxing, and everything that 
could be done in a limited space. The regi- 
mental band of the 28th was something that we 
were justly proud of, and they supplied the 
music for our concerts and dances — yes, we did 
have dances, even though there were no ladies 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 21 

present — ^half of the fellows tied handkerchiefs 
on their sleeves and took the ladies' part; their 
attempts at being ladylike and acting coy were 
very laughable. The only thing that really 
marred our pleasure was the lifeboat drill; any 
hour of the day or night when the signal was 
given, no matter what we were doing, we must 
grab our life-belt and make all possible speed 
to our place at the lifeboats. At first it was 
great fun, but soon we grew to hate it, and we 
almost wished the ship would be torpedoed 
just to make a change. The last three days 
of our trip we were in the ''Danger Zone," 
and at night all lights were put out and as 
many men as possible slept on deck; machine 
guns were posted and men on duty at them all 
the time. The sentries had orders to shoot 
any one that showed a light. We were obliged 
to wear our life-belts night and day, and if 
I looked as funny to the others as they did to 
me, I don't see how they ever got their faces 
straight. Most of our waking hours were spent 
in looking for *'subs," and every one that saw 
a bottle or stock on the water was sure he had 
sighted a periscope. One night as I was sleep- 
ing on deck I was awakened by having a great 



22 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

light flashed in my face — I jumped up in a 
hurry and to my amazement I found two 
great searchlights sweeping our ship from 
stern to stern — and immediately, out of the 
darkness, two destroyers, slim and grey, came 
racing up, one on either side of us. They gave 
us our first glimpse of Britain's sea power, 
and we felt a wonderful sense of security. 
In the morning we had a good look at the 
destroyers, for they were quite close and they 
kept just abreast of us — every now and then 
they would put on speed and rush ahead leav- 
ing us as if we were standing still — then they 
would turn almost in their own length and 
come rushing back, sometimes circling the 
ship two or three times. They reminded me 
of a couple of puppies gambolling and trying 
to coax the old dog into the game. 

We proceeded this way till we hit the Chan- 
nel, and soon we caught our first glimpse of 
the shores of England (or ''Blighty," as the 
soldiers call it). The green hills sure did look 
good to us after gazing at water for ten days. 
We also passed a big wooden ship built in the 
time of Nelson that is being used as a training- 
ship for cadets — as we steamed slowly by. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 23 

hundreds of the cadets were clustered on the 
masts and rigging, and they gave us a great 
burst of cheers. It was our first welcome to 
the old land. That night we slipped slowly 
into port, and again we caught a glimpse of 
Britain at war; big searchlights glaring out 
to sea, crossing and recrossing, searching — 
searching all the time. Big ships were going 
to and fro with coloured lights to show their 
identity. We stayed on the ship all night, but 
most of us were too excited to get any sleep. 
Next morning we were taken off and put 
aboard a dinky little train. The locomotives 
and coaches looked so small in comparison 
with the big American trans-continental trains 
that the Englishmen in our outfit came in for 
lots of chaff. "Baldy," the American, would 
say to Bob Goddard, ''Do you call this minia- 
ture thing a railroad? Wliy, at home we have 
trains as big as this running up and down the 
floors of our restaurants carrying flapjacks." 
Of course every one roared at this, and Bob 
said, "Never mind, you can laugh now, but 
wait till we start and see the speed we have." 
They argued on this for a while, and then Bob 
said, ''Why, the locomotives over here pick up 



24 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

water on the fly." *'Aw, that's nothing," said 
Baldy; ''they pick up hoboes on the fly in the 
States." Bob had nothing to say to this, and 
conversation lagged for a while. Some time 
later Bob called our attention to the really 
lovely scenery we were passing through. Said 
he, ''Look at those lovely old trees with the 
creepers on them; where in the States would 
you find anything to compare with them?" 
But Baldy was ready, "Aw, I can see you were 
never in a lumber camp." "What difference 
does that make?" says Bob. "All the differ- 
ence in the world," answered Baldy; "if you 
were ever in a lumber camp, you'd know with- 
out my telling you that we have men there with 
creepers on them." This was too much for 
Bob, and he quit ; — ^we played cards the rest of 
the way to London, but when we reached it 
we became interested again in the outside 
world. London was a place we had all heard 
of, but few of us had seen. Bob was nearly 
crazy, for we passed in sight of his home. Of 
course he had been away for several years, but 
his people still lived there; it sure was hard 
for him to be so near and not be able to stop 
and see them. He showed us all the points of 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 25 

interest that were in sight; but our first im- 
pression of London was rather disappointing, 
for we were either going through suburbs 
or smoky tunnels. We went through some 
crowded districts, and the people all ran out 
and cheered us as we passed. England was 
going wild over Canadians then, for it was just 
after the Second Battle of Ypres, where our 
boys had made such a name for themselves. 
On one street there were about five hundred 
kids, and Baldy remarked, *'No race suicide 
here.'* 

Pretty soon we left London and we all went 
back into the train. There was great specula- 
tion as to what camp we were bound for, but 
no one knew, and when at last the train came 
to a halt we were glad to get off and stretch 
our legs, — ^we stretched them a whole lot more 
than we intended before the night was out, — 
for we had to hike about four miles with full 
pack and then climb a long steep hill. We had 
nothing to eat all day and we were just like 
ravening wolves, but after we reached camp 
we had to wait for the cooks to prepare some 
''mulligan" (stewed beef) and tea; then we 
were lined up and bundled into our tents, about 



26 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

ten men in each. Next morning some of us 
were sent down to unload the transport and 
the rest were put to work setting things to 
rights at the camp. I was with those tliat went 
down to the depot, and here the battalion suf- 
fered its first casualty — the pet of the whole 
regiment was lying dead in the box-car — and 
though to an outsider he was only a bulldog, 
to us he was our beloved ^' Sandy," the mas- 
cot of our battalion. He had shared all our 
route marches, no matter what the weather, 
and as I saw him lying there I thought of the 
fun we used to have with him. Scores of times 
I have seen him, when the bugle sounded for 
us to fall in, go and take his little blanket 
from the low nail where it always hung, and 
beg one of the boys to put it on for him. He 
would wag himself almost to pieces trying to 
attract attention, and of course the boy 
wouldn't let on to notice him; so he would go 
from one to the other, till at last some one's 
good nature overcame the desire for further 
sport, and his blanket was fastened on. Then, 
with a glad bark, he would dash out and take 
his place at the head of the battalion. He 
knew the other bugle calls too, and the call to 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 27 

mess was answered by mad jumping and much 
showing of teeth. He responded with the of- 
ficers to the Colonel's Parade, and as the 
officers formed a circle round Colonel Embury 
to receive their orders for the day, it was 
funny to see old Sandy right in the centre gaz- 
ing up into the Colonel's face. Our 0. C. loved 
him and always gave him his share of atten- 
tion after the officers were dismissed — it was 
our Colonel who insisted on Sandy having his 
own bunk and blankets just like any of the 
men — so, after being such a pet, you can im- 
agine how we felt when we saw him lying there 
dead, and we realized that we were to blame 
for his death. All dogs entering England have 
to spend several weeks in quarantine, and to 
save him from this some of the boys had boxed 
him up and placed him in the baggage car, but 
whoever had done the job was not careful to 
place him right side up, and when we opened 
the box poor old Sandy was lying on his back 
dead. The whole battalion mourned his loss, 
and our Colonel most of all. Well, after we 
got everything loaded np, we went back to 
camp, and there we found the boys as busy as 
bees — we were telling them about Sandy when 



28 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

suddenly we heard a humming sound — every 
one gazed skyward, and across the camp flew 
one of the British dirigibles. Wliat a sight 
it was to us! The big cigar-shaped, silver- 
coloured airship dipped and climbed, and 
finally came down so low that we could plainly 
see the men in it. You should have heard the 
cheer we gave them. "We watched it till it 
disappeared out across the sea. After awhile 
we got used to seeing airships of all kinds and 
we took no notice of them, but at first they 
were very interesting. 

Another thing that happened on our first 
day in camp (by the way, we were quartered 
in Shorncliffe, right on the seacoast) — a few 
of us were standing looking across the Channel 
to France, and wondering what was happening 
there, when hoom-hoom-hooni! we heard the 
guns in Belgium. We could hardly believe our 
ears. I don't know about the other fellows, 
but it sent a queer feeling through me to know 
that only fifty or sixty miles away our boys 
were fighting and dying. Before this the war 
had seemed very unreal, but the sound of the 
guns made me realize that it was a grim reality, 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 29 

and I wondered how I would face it when the 
time came. 

Well, the next few days saw us settled in 
camp and then our training commenced in real 
earnest. We thought the six months' training 
in Canada had made us hard, but what we went 
through for the next two months made us like 
nails. We had shooting, skirmishing, night 
marches, trench-digging, besides all the special 
courses. Three other battalions were in the 
same camp — the 27th from Winnipeg, 31st 
from Calgary, and the 29th from Vancouver — 
and the four of us were formed into what was 
called the ''Sixth Brigade"; after the Battle 
of St. Eloi they were known as the "Iron 
Sixth." The only thing we objected to in the 
training was the length of time it took. It 
seemed as hard to get to France as it had been 
to get to England. We didn't eat from tables 
as we had in Canada, but each of us was pro- 
vided with exactly the same equipment as they 
have in France, — namely, a mess tin. When 
the meal was called we would all line up, and 
meat and potatoes and everything would be 
dished into our can; then we would hike off 



30 INTO THE JAWS OP DEATH 

to our tents and eat it sitting on the ground. 
Each day an orderly officer went the rounds to 
ask if there were any complaints, the usual 
procedure being to stick his head in the tent 
flap and say, ''Any complaints, boys!" and 
walk on without waiting for an answer. One 
day he came to our tent and standing in the 
tent door asked the usual question. One of 
the boys was a college-bred Englishman, and 
he spoke up and said, ''Oh, I say, old chap, 
there's no complaint; but, deah boy, I wish you 
would take your foot out of my mess tin — you 
are spoiling all my dinnah." The officer and 
the boys just roared. I suppose most of us 
compared it vnth the picturesque language we 
would have made use of. 

Bob went home on leave about this time, and 
while in London he ran across an old school- 
mate of his who was also home on leave. The 
lad's name was Harold Rust. He had spent 
several years in Canada, but happened to be 
in England when the war broke out and he 
had joined up with a London regiment. He 
had been one of Kitchener's "Contemptible 
Little Army" and had seen considerable serv- 
ice in France — ^he had been wounded and at 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 31 

the time Bob met him was home on sick leave 
■ — 'but he had been in America too long to en- 
joy the discipline of the British Army, and as 
he said himself he was "fed up" with it. So 
he asked Bob if there was any chance of get- 
ting into our brigade. He had tried several 
times to get a transfer into the Canadians, but 
each time he was turned down, so he said if 
Bob could get him in he would desert his own 
regiment and so save all the trouble of a 
transfer. Bob told him to send in an applica- 
tion to our Colonel, and shortly after Bob re- 
turned Colonel Embury sent for him. He said : 
**Goddard, I have here a letter from a man in 
London; he says he is a Canadian, and as all 
his chums are here, he wants to join the 28th. 
Do you know him?" ''Yes, Sir, I knew him 
in Winnipeg," says Master Bob. ''Well," said 
the Colonel, "we are one or two under strength, 
so I'll see what I can do." Bob came back 
tickled to death and told Tommy, Bink, and 
me all about it. If he got in we saw where 
we would have no end of fun having a fellow 
with us who had seen service in France and 
no one knowing it but ourselves. Well, a few 
nights later we were sitting in our tent foot- 



32 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

sore and dog-tired after an ail-day route march 
wlien in -walks Rust. Bob jumped up and 
made tlie introduction; he had been sent for to 
come down and take his medical examination. 
We wondered how he would ever get through 
without the Doctor seeing his wounds, but 
when he came up for his examination he got 
through by keeping his hand over the old scar. 
Next day he was attested, put into uniform, 
and then he was given leave to go home and 
fix up his business affairs. This is what he 
did — he changed on the train from khaki into 
civies, went home, put on his Imperial uni- 
form, and w^ent up to draw his regimental pay. 
He drew all that was coming to him, and tried 
to get an advance but failed. Then he went 
home, changed into his Canadian uniform, and 
leaving his other in a bundle, he came away 
without even letting his father know where he 
was going. He came down to Shorncliffe and 
we got him into our platoon and into our tent, 
and then the fun started. The boys thought 
him a greenhorn, and they were all showing 
him how to do things. He would let them help 
to put his puttees on, show him the hundred 
and one things that a soldier needs to know; 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 33 

we would almost burst trying to keep from 
laughing. When we were out drilling, he was 
just as clumsy as though he had never held a 
rifle — after him meeting the Germans in the 
open and firing till his rifle jammed. The 
Sergeant would take him out and give him pri- 
vate lessons, showing him how to slope arms 
and present arms, and all the time Rust was 
looking innocent and acting as awkward as the 
greenest of the green. Those of us who knew 
nearly killed ourselves laughing. Then they 
gave him another leave, and we didn't see any 
more of him till we were ready to leave for 
France. 

Leave to London was very hard to get, and 
of course we were all crazy to go there ; but we 
were all allowed late leave on Sundays, and of 
course we always had our Saturday afternoons, 
so if we could dodge the military police we 
took the train at noon on Saturday and spent 
Sunday in London. There was an early morn- 
ing train which got us in before reveille on 
Monday. We worked this successfully several 
times, but one Sunday almost our whole 
platoon was in London, and as luck would 
have it we all missed the early train. When 



34 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

our platoon lined up there were only ten pres- 
ent, and of course this gave the whole thing 
away. We arrived on the noon train and we 
sure did get a calling down — of course we were 
forbidden to do it again. However, before 
going to France each of us had a week in Lon- 
don, and that wonderful old city was surely an 
eye-opener to us Western boys. In fact, Eng- 
land itself is like a big garden; and so beau- 
tiful that it's little wonder that its people 
would fight to the last man to save it. We had 
only been in England a short time when they 
started giving instruction in special courses, 
such as bombing, signalling, and machine gun 
work. Any one who took one of these courses 
was exempt from all fatigue duty, and they 
did not report so early in the morning. 
Steve and I joined the bombers, known in 
France as the ''Suicide Club," and Bob, with 
two or three others, took up the machine 
gun work. I found the bomb throwing very 
interesting, and in our six weeks' course we 
learned to handle the ''Mills" bomb, "hair- 
brush," and the "jam tin." There was just 
enough danger in it to make it exciting and 
there was some sport as well. For instance, 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 35 

the ''jam tin" bomb is a real jam tin packed 
with explosive, and we had to make as well as 
throw them, and for practice we were allowed 
to bomb the trenches dug by our battalion. 
They would spend two or three weeks digging 
and fixing up a nice trench and then along 
would come the bombers and blow it all to 
smithereens — no wonder the boys were sore at 
US; but then, they were getting practice, and 
we were only doing what "Fritzie" would do 
for them later on. Steve and I stuck with the 
bombers, but one morning as I watched our 
battalion line up I was surprised to see Bob 
and his pals in the ranks. When we met that 
night I asked him why he had given up the 
machine gun work, and I sure did laugh at 
what he told me. He said: ''Aw, I liked the 
work well enough, and it was fun to see how 
mad our Sergeant got when he came after us 
for picket or guard duties ; we thought we had 
a snap sitting down listening to the machine 
gun officer's lectures, but what do you think 
he told us yesterday? Why, that in the event 
of a retirement machine guns were left behind 
to cover the retreat, and were sacrificed to 
save the main body of the Army! Now, 



36 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

wouldn't that be a devil of a fix to be in? No 
sacrifice stuff for mine — I don't mind taking 
my chance with the other boys, but I won't stay 
out there alone." Poor old Bob, we all roasted 
him about it, but he never went back. Shortly 
before leaving England almost the entire 10th 
platoon got leave, and we all went up to 
London, and I assure you the time we had 
wasn't slow. Bob and a few of the others 
whose homes were in London spent part of the 
time there, but we had a whole week and we 
spent the last few days together. Among 
other places of interest, we visited Madame 
Tussaud's Waxworks, and it was here that 
Scottie slipped one over Bink. We were all 
standing at the entrance and Scottie said, 
**Bink, go and ask the attendant for a pro- 
gram." Bink walked up to the lady at the 
table, and in his most polite tone said, ''Can 
you let me have a program?" Evidently 
the attendant didn't hear, for there was no 
answer, so Bink said in a louder tone, *'Say, 
look here, I want a program"; still there 
was no response and Bink was beginning to 
look sore, when Scottie yells out, ''Come away 
from there, you darn fool; are you going to 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 37 

talk to that wax figure all day?" Scottie 
would have ''cashed in" right there if Bink 
could have caught him. 

The same day we had a good joke on Steve 
— he had heard that Leicester Lounge was a 
favourite meeting-place for Canadians, and he 
decided to go there and see if he could find 
any of the boys, so he hailed a taxi and gave 
the man orders to drive him to Leicester 
Lounge. The driver took him round a couple 
of blocks and then said, ''Here's the place, 
Sir." Steve paid him and then looked around 
to find himself in the very spot he started from 
— he had been standing in front of Leicester 
Lounge when he took the taxi, and it is just 
as well that he does not know what that driver 
thought of him — however, he was sport enough 
to tell the joke on himself. Well, the week 
slipped by and we took a couple of extra days 
on our own account — of course we expected to 
pay up for it, but we thought it was worth 
it. Our next leave would be from France, and 
anything might happen before then. Well, we 
got back, and to our joy, we found that the 
Orderly Sergeant had got "soused" and for- 
got to mark us absent, so maybe we were not 



38 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

glad that we had those two extra days — the 
only crimes you are sorry for in the Army are 
the ones that are found out. Several times 
after this we took "French leave" and went up 
to London, and then we had our work cut out 
dodging- the military police. Sometimes we 
were caught and then we had to pass a day or 
two in "Clink" — or, in other words, guard- 
room. We had bathing parade once or twice 
a week, and we would all go down and have 
a swim in the sea. Oh, it was great sport, and 
we were surprised to find it so easy to swim 
in the salt water. The country around our 
camp was very hilly and most of our route 
marches were made with full kit, so a long 
route march was anything but fun. Our two 
Americans took a delight in guying Bob about 
his love for scenery — poor old Bob would be 
sweating along under his heavj^ pack and one 
of the boys would call out, "Well, Bob, how 
do you like your scenery now?" Bob was 
silent, perhaps because he needed all his 
breath for walking, like the small steamboat 
that put on such a big whistle that it hadn't 
power enough to navigate and blow its whistle 
at the same time. But we did enjoy being sent 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 39 

on ahead as scouts to find out the lay of the 
country. We would travel till we came across 
some out-of-the-way "pub" or village inn, 
and there we would stay till it was time to go 
back to camp; then we would rejoin the bat- 
talion and give a lot of information that we 
had made up betw^een us. 



CHAPTER II 

There was one big event that we will remem- 
ber for the rest of our lives, and that was our 
re\aew by the King and Lord Kitchener. We 
were reviewed on Sir John Moore's Plain, and 
the entire Second Division of Infantry as well 
as the Artillery was out that day; all the roads 
leading to the Plain were packed with troops, 
and as we all marched down and lined up in 
review order, it was the biggest bunch of sol- 
diers I have ever seen together. There were 
somewhere between fifteen and sixteen thou- 
sand men, and when they were marching with 
fixed bayonets it looked like a sea of steel. 

After lining up w^e had a long wait, and all 
at once a thunderstorm came up. The rain 
came doAvn in pailfuls, and soon all the boys 
were singing "Throw out the life line, some 
one is sinking today." One of the boys near 
me said, "I don't see why the devil no one has 
ever thought of putting a roof over this blamed 
island." "Well, just when we were in the mid- 
dle of our song and the whole fifteen thousand 

40 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 41 

men were roaring it out at the top of their 
voices, the King's automobile went by. "We 
were soon put into marching order and the 
march past the King and Lord Kitchener com- 
menced. Wlien we got the order *'Eyes 
right ! " we looked at them both — the King was 
a smaller man than we expected to see, and 
Kitchener looked older than we thought he 
would be. But oh, what eyes Kitchener had! 
they seemed to be looking every man straight 
in the face — the boys all noticed the same 
thing, and spoke of it afterwards. After the 
march past the officers were called up and con- 
gratulated on the showing the men had made, 
and they passed it on to us. Well, away we 
went back to camp, wet and tired, but delighted 
over the events of the day and we all felt proud 
of being '^Britishers." When we got back to 
camp and were talking things over, we all 
agreed that our inspection was a sign of an 
early departure for Prance, and from that on 
the place buzzed with rumours of when we 
were to start. It does not take much to start 
a rumour going in the Army — for instance, 
the Colonel buys a light shirt, and his batman 
tells somebody that he thinks we are going to 



42 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

a warm climate, as the Colonel is buying light 
clothes. The person he told it to passes it on 
this way — '*0h yes, the Colonel's servant says 
we are going to India/' and No. 3 announces 
''I have it from some one high up that wo are 
being sent to India instead of to France, the 
Colonel is laying in a supply of light clothes ; 
and in the Quartermaster's store they have 
gotten in a supply of sun helmets" — and so it 
goes, increasing in size like the report of a 
German victory in their newspapers. But we 
soon saw that our stay was going to be short, 
for presently our new equipment was issued to 
us. This consisted of two khaki shirts, two 
heavy suits of underwear, two heavy army 
blankets, rifle and ammunition, hat covers, 
several pairs of socks, a lot of small things, 
and last but not least, two pairs of boots. 
Besides this, we had our haversack containing 
emergency rations: tea, sugar, army biscuits, 
and bully-beef. I put my pack on the scales 
when I got it all together, and it weighed just 
one hundred pounds. 

Our new issue of boots came in for more 
attention than anything else. I must tell you 
about them; they were destined to cause us no 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 43 

end of misery in the near future. Such boots ! 
''Gravel crushers," we called them. Big heavy 
marching boots, armour-plated on the sole and 
so large that they looked and felt like barges. 
In my childhood days I never could under- 
stand how the "Old Lady lived in a shoe," but 
when I saw these boots the mystery was 
solved; though, mind you, they were just the 
thing for France ; and after they got broken in, 
we couldn't have had anything better. But 
after our light-weight boot manufactured out 
of paper by some of our patriotic(l) Canadian 
firms, it took some time to get our feet used 
to the heavier weight. 

Just before we were ready to leave for France 
we were treated to an air-raid. Some Zeppelins 
came over and dropped bombs not far from 
our camp. Of course the warning was sounded, 
all lights put out, and we sat there as still as 
mice, wondering what was going to happen 
next. I fancy we felt something as a rabbit 
does when there is a keen-eyed hawk soaring 
overhead. However, the danger passed and 
there was no harm done, but they were evi- 
dently looking for our camp, for two days 
after we left it, it was properly bombed. 



44 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

Well, after we got our equipment, we were 
kept busy for a couple of days signing sheets 
and undergoing kit inspection, but finally 
everything was attended to and we were ready 
to start. It was a hot day when we ''fell in" 

for our eight-mile hike to , and when I 

had all my kit in place, I think I must have 
looked like a snail who carries his house packed 
on his back. Well, the farther we went the 
heavier our load became. Our feet were tor- 
tured by the new stiff boots; some of the boys 
took theirs off and walked in their socks, but 
these had their feet cut and bruised by the 
stones which plentifully bestrewed our way. 
Oh, how we cursed our officers for making us 
wear our new boots for the first time on such 
a hike. We should have had them long enough 
ahead to get them broken in. Well, some of 
the boys fell out, but the rest of us struggled 
on, and at last, just at dark, we reached the 
pier. We were dripping with perspiration, and 
we had eaten nothing except our army ration. 
Well, we sat around till we all got cold; and 
then, to our utter amazement and disgust, the 
order came, not to embark, but to ''right- 
about-turn"; and with much swearing and 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 45 

grousing, we commenced what was afterwards 
known among the 6th Brigade as ''The Re- 
treat from Folkestone. ' ' Of course the officers 
weren't to blame — some mines had broken loose 
in the Channel, and until they were looked 
after by the mine sweepers it wasn't safe to 
cross. Oh, that march! no one who went 
through it will ever forget what we went 
through. In all my experience in France, I 
never carried such a pack. And after going a 
short distance on the return trip, the boys, like 
sinking ships, began to get rid of their cargo 
— for miles that road was strewn with boots, 
shirts, sweaters, cap covers, all kinds of arti- 
cles — then the boys themselves began to fall 
out, and the dog-tired men rolled themselves 
in their blankets and lay down in their tracks. 
By the way, we were not going back to 
Folkestone, but were bound for a place known 
as "Sir John Moore's Plain"; but nobody 
knew how far it was, nor the quickest way to 
get there; some went one way and some 
another. Our battalion kept on going with 
frequent rests; we were dripping with sweat, 
and when the men sat down to rest they were 
too tired and disgusted to even swear. Finally 



46 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

our officers turned to us and said, ''Only 
another mile, boys," and our hopes revived a 
little ; but meeting a civilian, I asked him how 
far it was to Moore's Plain, and he said, "Oh, 
it's about four miles." Our officer overheard 
and said "Come on, boys, let's make camp 
here," and No. 10 platoon quit right there. 
"We were going through a little village at the 
time, and we piled up on the lawns, rolled out 
our blankets and went to sleep. Next morn- 
ing the lady of the house who owned the lawn 
found us there; she took pity on us, and call- 
ing us in gave us our breakfast. Later, we 
were sitting on the lawn when our Colonel 
drove up in his automobile. He called, "Come 
on, boys, hurry up and get up to the camp," 
He told us how to go and then went on to round 
up the rest — so we drifted on towards the camp 
and finally reached it, and all that day the boys 
came straggling in, some of them still carry- 
ing their boots. Well, that night we had to 
pack up and march down again, but this time 
it wasn't so hot, and all our spare equipment 
went by transport. We reached the port about 
dusk and we were soon loaded up; as soon as 
we got on board, life-belts had to be put on, 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 47 

and the boat started immediately. We watched 
the lights of "Old Blighty" flicker and fade 
away; and every now and then we caught 
glimpses of destroyers as they went by and 
disappeared into the darkness. Finally the 
last lighthouse was passed— no more lights 
were to be seen, and I turned and looked to- 
wards France, wondering what was in store 
for me there. Little did I think that I would 
spend a year in Germany before I would see 
the English shores again. 

It wasn't long before the lights of France 
came in sight. We watched them get clearer 
and clearer, and soon the command came to 
put our packs on. We were all ready to march 
by the time the boat was docked, and off we 
went. We were on the soil of France, and we 
all looked around curiously. The first thing I 
noticed was a French soldier on guard, and I 
saw that he presented arms in a different way 
to what we were used to, and also that his 
bayonet was about twice as long as ours. We 
soon passed him, and I don't remember much 
about the march that followed. We were dead- 
tired, and after travelling for what seemed 
hours over cobblestones we came to a steep 



48 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

hill — the boys commenced to swear, but we 
stuck to it for a while. Finally I gave up and 
lay down beside the road; by this time a lot 
of the boys had dropped out. After resting a 
while I started on again, and found Bink and 
Bob unrolling their blankets — I wanted them 
to come with me, but a sleep looked good to 
them. Tommy, Steve, and Baldy were doing 
the same thing, but instead of following suit I 
struggled on; at the top of the hill I found a 
bunch of tents, but that was all — the visions I 
had of a hot meal faded away, there was no 
grub in sight — I rolled into one of the tents, 
spread out my blankets, and had just closed 
my eyes, when a voice said, ^'O'Brien, you are 
on fatigue." I started to kick, but it was no 
use, so I followed the Sergeant out to where 
he had a bunch lined up; we w^ere ordered to 
go down to the commissary tent about five 
hundred yards distant and draw rations. Well, 
aw^ay we went, and we spent the rest of the 
night carrying up boxes of jam, butter, bully- 
beef, and sardines. When I was carrying up 
the last two boxes, just at daylight, along came 
the other boys; they thought it w^as a great 
joke for them to be comfortably sleeping while 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 49 

I worked getting up grub for them to eat. I 
couldn't see the fun in it just then, and I told 
them so, but they only laughed the more. 
Well, I curled up in my blankets, and it seemed 
that I had just got to sleep when Tonmay 
wakened me; breakfast was being served, and 
he had drawn mine. After my bacon and tea 
and a good wash I felt better. 

While we were at breakfast a lot of little 
French kids crowded around, and we were all 
amused at the little beggars. Their speech, 
half French and half English, was very funny. 
But say, you should have seen them smoke! 
Little kids hardly able to walk were smoking 
just like old men. They seemed very hungry, 
and we gave them lots of our food until we 
found they were putting it into a sack to carry 
away. 

Well, we stayed in camp till noon, and just 
after dinner we were told to get ready to move 
off. Soon we were marching dowm to take the 
train, and if the French people who watched 
us so curiously had seen us go up the night 
before they would not have recognized us as 
the same bunch. The French gave us a great 
reception; the girls brought us fruit, candy, 



50 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

and smokes, and our journey to the station 
was quite a triumphal procession. One of the 
girls came running up and gave me a couple 
of bottles — Rust was beside me and had been 
through it all before, so he whispered, "Put 
them in your pack; it is red wine." I guess I 
was a little slow in getting them out of sight, 
for our officer saw them and he said, "Don't 
touch that, it may be poisoned." Of course 
we had to be careful of spies, but I stuck the 
bottles in my pack when the officer wasn't 
looking. Well, we marched to the depot and 
were soon packed into the small uncomfortable 
coaches. We started to kick and grumble, but 
Rust said: "You are lucky to have coaches at 
all. Last time I went up I rode in a cattle- 
car," and he pointed out a lot of cars on which 
was painted "Capacity, so many horses, so 
many men." After that we hadn't anything 
more to say. 

After much talking and jabbering by the 
French interpreters we finally got started, 

and we soon left L h far behind. I got out 

my poisoned (?) wine, and not wanting to take 
any risks myself I politely let Baldy have the 
first drink. I waited a few minutes and he still 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 51 

looked well, so we finished it up. This put us 
in good spirits for the trip and every one was 
gay; no one would ever have imagined that we 
were on our way to the trenches. We were 
very much interested in the country we were 
passing through, but what struck us most 
forcibly was the number of soldiers we saw. 
Everj'Avhere we looked there were crowds of 
them; we thought there were a lot in Blighty, 
but there seemed to be notliing else here. We 
passed big railway guns, and once a big Red 
Cross train glided slowly by — this made us 
think a bit — but we tried not to look into the 
future, for we realized that the horrible side 
of the war would come to us soon enough. 
Every time the train stopped the French kids 
would crowd around the coaches crying ''Bully- 
beef, biscuits, cigarettes for my papa, prisoner 
in Germany." It was all new to us, and we 
gave them all we could spare. Later on we 
got wdse to the kids, and we found that if we 
were soft-hearted or soft-headed, they would 
say the whole family were prisoners. One 
thing that surprised and shocked us was to 
hear the little kids swearing; they would use 
the most frightful oaths, and the funny part of 



52 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

it was that they gave them the pure cockney 
twang; I suppose they had heard and were 
imitating the Imperial troops. Well, after 

travelling all day we finally arrived in C 

and we were marched off to our first billets. 
I belonged to **C" Company and we were 
quartered in a barn connected with a farm- 
house. It was late when we arrived, and after 
we had supper we lay doAvn in the straw and 
soon were all asleep; but it wasn't long before 
we became uneasy, and soon we were awak- 
ened by the feeling that some one or some- 
thing was trying to bore holes in us. We 
twisted and turned, but the first ones to 
waken, tried to keep quiet, and it was not till 
ev^ery one was on the move that we realized 
that we had made our first acquaintance with 
the worst pest in the Army — body lice, or 
'* cooties" as they call them — the straw on 
which we were lying was fairly alive with the 
little beasts. We thought it strange then, but 
nearly every billet where there is straw is the 
same; ** soldiers come and soldiers go, but the 
same straw goes on forever." The next day 
we were busy boiling our shirts, but if we had 
only known we might have saved ourselves the 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 53 

trouble, for we were never free from the pests 
after that. All the belts and powders people 
send out only seem to fatten them — by the 
way, gas doesn't kill them either; I think they 
must have gas helmets. The day was spent in 
inspection, and the paymaster came and gave 
us our first pay in France, fifty francs; that 
night we were allowed do^vnto"um, and we 
made our first acquaintance with the French 
estaminets or wane-shops; they are only al- 
lowed to sell light wines, red and white, to the 
troops, and French beer. Well, one might just 
as well drink water. Rust had been through 
the mill before and could speak French pretty 
well, and was soon jabbering to the old French- 
woman, whose face became all smiles when 
she found he had been wounded at Ypres ; her 
husband had also been wounded there. We 
wandered in and out every place in the village 
till it was time to go back to billets. The next 
day we had to smarten up and get ready for 
the Brigadier-General, who was going to in- 
spect us. Brigadier-General Ketchen was his 
name, and instead of a formal inspection he 
rode up, dismounted, came into the orchard 
where we were all lined up and said, ''Dismiss 



54 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

the men, Major." The Major did so and the 
Brigadier then spoke to us: ''Gather round, 
boys, I want to have a little talk with you. 
You'v^e been under my command about nine 
months now, and I've always been proud of 
you, and now you are going up the line, and I 
want to say this to you: Don't go up with any 
idea that you are going to be killed — we want 
you all to take care of yourselves and not ex- 
pose yourselv^es recklessly — never mind if Bill 
bets Harry that he can stick his head over 
without being hit, for if he loses he can't pay. 
And remember a dead man is no use to us, we 
want you alive, and when we want you to put 
your heads up, we'll tell you! And I've no 
doubt that you will only be too eager. Now, 
your Colonel and myself have been in the 
trenches, where you are going, and you are 
relieving a regiment that has a name second 
to none out here; and I want you to have the 
same kind of a name. The food is fine — in 
fact, we were surprised to see so much and of 
such good quality in the front line. Above all, 
I want you to trust your officers as I trust them, 
and I'm sure they trust you. If at any time 
you think you are suffering any injustice, 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 55 

don't talk and grumble amongst yourselves, but 
let's hear about it, and if we can remedy it 
that's what w^e want to do. Now, I suppose 
this will be the last chance I have of talking 
to you before you go in the trenches, and I 
don't think there is much more to say. We 
have a long hike ahead of us tomorrow, and 
you will march through a town where corps 
headquarters are, and thousands of soldiers 
will be there, and I want you to show, by your 
marching and march discipline, that as soldiers 
and fighting men Canadians are second to none. 
That's all, boys!" We thought quite a lot of 
his speech and the simple way in which it was 
delivered, and we got to discussing things and 
sharpening our bayonets and doing a lot more 
fool things. The place where we were had 
been occupied by Germans early in the war, a 
Uhlan patrol having stayed there, and the 
Frenchman showed a Uhlan lance and scars on 
the doors and sides of the barn where frag- 
ments of shell had struck when they had been 
chased out. The next day we formed up 
bright and early, and away we marched. We 
had not gone far when every neck was craned 
up, watching some little black and white dots 



56 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

in the sky. I asked Rust what it was. ''Oh, 
anti-aircraft guns shooting at an aeroplane,'* 
said he. We strained our eyes, but it was a 
long way off and high up, and we couldn't see 
the aeroplane. Later on we saw what looked 
like big sausages up in the sky. They were the 
big observation balloons, and so we kept on, 
something new and interesting all the time. 
We passed lots of troops out in their rest bil- 
lets; muddy and dirty some of them looked; 
they watched us in amused contempt as we 
swung proudly by, as much as to say, ''Wait 
till you've been through what we have, you 

won't look so smart." We soon came to B , 

and with the regimental band at our head play- 
ing, "Pack all your troubles in your old kit- 
bag" we marched through in great shape. At 
sundown we reached camp, tired, all in, but 
still interested. We were quartered in huts 
close to an old ruined town, and we were within 
shell fire. Directly we had supper we were 
outside watching the shells burst about a mile 
away; I don't think we ever thought of Fritz 
shelling us. Aeroplanes were flying overhead 
and our guns were keeping up an incessant 
roar, but it seemed more on our right; after- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 57 

wards we knew that it was the big bombard- 
ment before the Battle of Loos. "We all slept 
well that night and were np early the next 
morning. We lounged around all day, and a 
party of officers and N.C.O.'s went to look^over 
the trenches we were going in. Just at night- 
fall it started to rain, a cold wet drizzling rain, 
and when we fell in, it looked as if we wei:e in 
for a wetting, and we were. We were carry- 
ing our packs, and as we started off we were 
all feeling fine, and if it hadn't been for the 
rain we wouldn't have minded. I often laugh 
when I think of that march; we were miles 
away from any Germans when we started, yet 
we spoke in whispers, — of course we didn't 
know any better then, — and whenever a flare 
went up we stopped, then went on again. We 
could see where the trenches were as flares were 
continually going up, lighting up things for a 
while and then dj'ing out. At last we met some 
men from the battalion that we were going to 
relieve, and they acted as guides ; past tumble- 
down houses, along roads full of holes, in and 
out of mudholes. We were very careful at 
first, but we mght just as well have walked ' ' 
through the lot, for we were all mud to our 



58 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

knees when we got in. We at last entered the 
communicating trenches and we followed each 
other, cracking a joke now and again to keep 
our spirits up; every little while ivliiz! would 
go a bullet overhead and we ducked our nuts 
— we were perfectly safe if we had only knowTi. 
We passed some Highlanders (Canadians) ; I 
suppose they must have been amused at us, as 
we were all eager to know where the Germans 
were — I think we had an idea that we were 
going into a bayonet charge every morning 
before breakfast. Soon we came to a place 
where the trench jogged in and out, and in 
every jog were men standing up and looking 
across into the blackness ; we were in the front 
line. After much confusion we at last relieved 
the others. Listening-posts had to be placed and 
machine guns manned and lots of other things 
done. We soon found out that one could look 
over at night and be comparatively safe; there 
was always a certain amount of rifle fire, but 
one can't aim at night and the bullets mostly 
go high. At last day dawned, and we were 
quite surprised to find that nothing had hap- 
pened; Scottie and I had our breakfast, — the 
cook cooked it, and it was distributed in the 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 59 

trench, — then we were put on sentry to watch 
through the periscope, while the rest had a 
sleep. We were sitting there talking things 
over when we heard a roaring noise overhead, 
and a hing-hang! in the town which lay behind 
our trenches. We thought it was aeroplanes 
dropping bombs, and Scottie and I looked for 
them but we couldn't see anything. At last an 
officer came along and we asked hm. '^Oh 
yes," said he, "those are German shells." 
Well, after a few days in the trenches we went 

back to a place called L for a rest, or 

rather we were in reserve. We were now in 
what was known as the Kermnel Shelters; 
here we turned night into day — we slept or did 
nothing in the daytime, but at night we worked 
like bees — we were busy on fatigue parties 
carrying up anununition and provisions to the 
front lines. Now, don't run oi¥ with the idea 
that this is a bomb-proof job ; Fritzie knows all 
about the supplies that must be brought up, 
and you can bet your sweet life that he takes 
a delight in picking off rationing parties, and 
such-like. Every night our supports were 
heavily shelled ; every road leading to the lines 
had a battery trained on it and every little 



60 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

while it was swept by shrapnel. We gradually 
got used to the danger, and if they started to 
shell the road we were on we would flop into 
a ditch or shell hole till the storm had passed. 
Speaking of this reminds me of something that 
happened in that first week. A party of us 
were carrying coke to the front line, and we 
had two sacks each; I had mine tied together 
and hung around my neck (the way I wore my 
red mittens when I was a youngster). We 
walked single file, and the boy ahead called 
back, ''Shell hole, keep to the right," but it 
was too late for me, one foot had gone in and 
the weight of the coke made me lose my bal- 
ance, so in I plunged head first; there was four 
feet of water in that hole, to say nothing of 
the soft juicy mud at the bottom, and I gurgled 
and gasped and was almost drowned before I 
could free myself from the coke. Finally I 
struggled out, and without waiting to recover 
my cargo I made a bee-line for my billet^ — the 
boys were fairly killing themselves laughing, 
and I don't blame them noiv, for I must have 
been a pretty-looking bird; I was plastered 
from head to foot with mud, and dirty water 
streamed over my beautiful features. Well, 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 61 

after a week of this night duty we were sent 
eight miles back to ''Rest Billets" — here we 
got a bath — which I assure you was very wel- 
come — also some clean clothes, but we didn't 
succeed in shaking our friends the ''cooties"; 
— like the poor, they were always with us. 
While on rest we were quartered in some frame 
huts, and these extended for a quarter of a mile 
on either side of the road. Between the huts 
and the road there was an immense ditch, and 
this usually contained a couple of feet of muddy 
water ; the boys had planks leading from their 
huts to the road. One night one of the boys 
came home loaded and he attempted to cross 
one of these planks — in the darkness he missed 
his footing and flop! he went into the water; he 
found himself sitting in about two feet of 
slushy mud and he put down his hands to push 
himself up, but the mud was sticky and he only 
succeeded in going in deeper. We heard him 
calling for help, and when we got to him only 
his head and toes were above water; the air 
around looked very blue, but I don't believe the 
Recording Angel put down everything he said. 
He looked so funny we could hardly help him 
for laughing. 



62 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

Well, our week's rest was over all too soon 
for us, and we were sent back to the front 
lines. This was the routine that we followed 
that winter; one week in the trenches, one at 
the supports, and one on rest. We had been 
up to the trenches three times before we had 
our first brush with Fritzie; the Battle of Loos 
was being fought to the southward, but things 
had been comparatively quiet with us. How- 
ever, one evening when we were ''standing to," 
just at sunset, suddenly the ground that we 
were standing on began to rock — ^we pitched too 
and fro like drunken men — and farther down 
the trench the earth opened and a flame of fire 
shot up into the air. It looked more like a 
volcano in eruption than anything else, and we 
couldn't imagine what was happening. Some- 
one yelled, "The Germans are coming!"; but 
our officer said, ''Don't be frightened, boys; a 
mine has been exploded." The German artil- 
lery then opened up a terrific bombardment, 
and they were answered by our guns, and for 
about an hour it certainly seemed as if hell had 
been let loose. We were afraid to take shelter 
in our dugouts, for we thought that Fritzie 
might come over any moment, and sure enough, 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 63 

as soon as their gun fire slackened, we saw 
them coming. It was an exciting moment when 
we got our first sight of them, and I know I 
trembled from head to foot ; but we opened fire 
on them and as soon as I began shooting, all 
fear left me — they never got farther than their 
owTi wire entanglements — ^the rapid fire from 
our rifles and the support of our guns was too 
much for them. No doubt they expected to find 
us all dead after the explosion and the shelling 
they had given us, but we showed them that we 
were still very much alive. We *' stood to" all 
that night, but nothing further happened. Just 
at dawn I peeped over the parapet, and it looked 
as though some one had been hanging out a 
wash; their wire entanglements were full of 
German uniforms. Of course we were not al- 
lowed to leave our post during the night in case 
of another attack, but when morning came we 
looked around to see what damage the mine had 
done; we found that about fifty of our brave 
boys were either killed or wounded— this was 
the first break in our ranks, and it made us feel 
very sore — you could put a good-sized house in 
the crater made by the explosion, and it was 
to occupy this that the Germans had come over. 



64 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

The crater was immediately organized as a 
listening-post and ever afterwards it was 
known as the ''Glory Hole." It was always 
the hottest part of our trench, and many a night 
I spent in it. The German trench was only 
thirty yards away, and they could lob bombs 
in on top of ns. To improve matters, old 
"Glory" always contained at least two feet 
of water, and on a cold rainy night it was 
"some job" standing at listening-post, two 
hours at a stretch, up to the knees in water. 
When relieved, you had four hours off, and you 
would huddle up on the firing-step with your 
feet still in the water, and either smoke or try 
to get a little sleep. But, often it rained, 
snowed, and froze all in the same night, and 
I have had my clothes frozen so stiff that in 
the morning I could scarcely move. 

But, to come back to our story. Next morn- 
ing the killed and wounded were taken back of 
the lines, and things went on as before, only 
now we did not feel nearly so comfortable, 
knowing that at any moment the earth might 
open and up we would go. We were in the 
trenches one day when shuz-z-z-shiz-hang! the 
dirt flew, not far from us, but we couldn't see 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 65 

what had done it. Later we heard the same 
noise, and coining tumbling through the air 
was something that looked like a big black 
sausage; the moment it struck the ground it 
exploded with an awful concussion, and dirt 
and sandbags flew. It was a big trench mortar, 
and we soon found that if you saw it in time 
you could dodge it. Fritzie had a special spite 
at the ''Glory Hole," and every little while he 
would strafe it. About this time we received 
our first supply of trench mortars, and I as- 
sure you we enjoyed using them. They were 
big round balls weighing about sixty pounds, 
and they looked something like the English 
plum pudding. We called them "Plum Pud- 
din's." I don't know what Fritzie called them, 
but he got them whether he called them or not. 
They had long steel handles and were easily 
thrown; no doubt the Germans were just as 
busy dodging ours as we were getting out of 
the way of theirs. 

For the next couple of months nothing of 
any importance happened, and all we seemed 
to do was fill sandbags with mud, dig new 
trenches, clean out old ones, and wade through 
mud; and such mud! so many men wading 



66 INTO THE JAAVS OF DEATH 

through it worked it up and made it like glue 
— in some places it was up to the waist and 
many a man got stuck and had to wait till 
some one came along and pulled him out — 
through it all our little bunch stuck together 
and had lots of fun laughing at each other's 
misfortunes. We were usually on the same 
working parties and listening-posts; working 
on the latter gave us eyes like cats, though I 
can tell you that it is no fun staring out into 
''No Man's Land" (the space between the 
German lines and ours) for hours at a time, 
not daring to move or speak. We had a wire 
with us connected with the trench, for a 
listening-post is always an advanced position, 
and we used a code of signals. One pull meant 
''Send up a flare, we want to have a good look 
around," two pulls "All's well," three "Hos- 
tile patrol is out in No Man's Land," and if 
we threw the bomb that we always carried it 
meant that the Germans were coming and it 
gave a general alarm. We had only had the one 
brush with Fritzie, and the discomforts of the 
trenches began to get on our nerves ; we would 
much rather have been mixed up in the real 
fighting. Of course when we were off on rest 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 67 

we had clean clothes, better grub, and our let- 
ters and parcels from home; coming up to 
Christmas the latter became more numerous, 
and we usually found a bunch waiting for us. 
We were just like one big family, and the boys 
who got parcels shared up with those who 
hadn't any; Bob would pick up Tommy's par- 
cel, look at the name, and say, ''We've got a 
parcel." 

Then came our first Christmas in the 
trenches, or rather in France. We were out 
at the support billets on Christmas Day, and 
after working all night we were much dis- 
gusted when our Sergeant came in where we 
were sleeping and told us we had to go up to 
the lines with some supplies. However, they 
gave us an issue of rum, and we started out. 
We had made our trip and were on the road 
back when a sniper caught sight of us. There 
was water in the communication trench, and 
my chum and I got out and walked on top; 
pretty soon a bullet passed between us but we 
did not pay any attention, we thought it must 
be an accident, but a few seconds later, another 
hit just ahead of us and we realized that we 
were the '* centre of attraction," so we made 



68 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

a bound for the trench; just as we lit, another 
bullet struck just behind us, so we came pretty 
near getting a Christmas box from Fritz. We 
found that we had to take over the trenches 
that night, so there was not much fuss made 
over our Christmas dinner, but we had a little 
extra spread. 

However, when New Year's came we were at 
rest billet, and our beloved Colonel had planned 
a big dinner for us. It was served in an old 
schoolhouse and we had roast turkey, plum 
pudding, and almost everything you could men- 
tion, and the Colonel himself came in and 
carved the turkey for us. All that week on rest 
we had a glorious time, our parcels had arrived 
from home and every one was feeling happy. 

Nothing of any importance happened in the 
next few weeks, things were pretty quiet on 
the line; of course it was raining most of the 
time and we were up to our knees in mud and 
water. We were four months without seeing 
the sun, and we were beginning to think that 
Fritzie had gotten his range and blown him 
out. Then too we were crawling with vermin, 
and even when we got a clean outfit of clothes 
in a few hours they would be just as bad as 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 69 

ever. Being wet all the time, and having to 
put up with the discomfort of vermin and rats, 
were harder on us than the dangers of actual 
fighting. The part of the line where we were 
had superior artillery positions and observa- 
tion posts, and any time Fritzie opened up, our 
artillery soon silenced him. It used to be a case 
of *'You let me alone, and I'll let you alone." 
The trenches were in awful shape in spite of 
the continuous working parties, each rain made 
them a little worse. We used to get our rum 
every morning, and I want to say a word 
to those at home who say it should be stopped. 
I would like to make them lie out in a wet mud- 
hole all night, come in blue and cold and 
hardly able to stand, not knowing whether they 
had feet or lumps of ice attached to their legs, 
and see whether or not they would want some- 
thing to warm them up — I think we would all 
have been dead if it hadn't been for the rum 
that winter. You see, you are ''all in'' after 
a night in the open, and all you want to do is 
to sleep, so you crawl into the nearest dugout 
and lie down; now, the rum just keeps the 
blood circulating and the body warm while 
you are sleeping, so that when you waken you 



70 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

have not caught the chill that otherwise you 
would have done, for those dugouts of ours 
were anything but cozy and comfortable. They 
were really only little huts in the trench, each 
one large enough for two or three men. They 
were built up with sandbags and had a piece 
of corrugated iron over the top; for the floor 
there was usually two or three inches of wet 
mud. I assure you it was cold comfort, and 
we were not allowed to lie in peace even here — 
a rat would run over your face, or crawl over 
your bodj^ to see if there was anything eatable 
in your pockets. Every bit of eats about us 
had to be securely fastened up in our mess tins 
to save it from these pests. I remember one 
morning I came in from sentry duty, and after 
having breakfast I lay dowm in a dugout; we 
were given enough bread ration in the morn- 
ing to last us all day, and what was over from 
my breakfast I put in my mess tin, but I had 
lost the cover of my tin, so I hung it up think- 
ing it would be safe from the rats. Uncle Sam 
was sleeping when I came in, and I lay down 
beside him. I was enjoying a cigarette when 
all at once I saw a rat heading for my tin; I 
didn't want to get up to chase him away, so 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 71 

I reached over and brought up my rifle — there 
was scarcely room to use it in the dugout, but 
just as the rat reached my tin I fired. Uncle 
Sam leaped to his feet, scared half out of his 
wits; he was sure that a shell had struck our 
dugout. When he saw what I had done, he 
said, "Why in hell don't you take the brutes 
out when you want to shoot them, and not be 
making a mess here?" There ^was only about 
twelve inches of slush in the dugout at the 
time. But our favourite method of killing this 
loathsome animal was to fix our bayonet and, 
sticking a bit of meat on the end of it, put our 
rifle over the parapet ; then when Mr. Rat came 
along and nibbled at the meat, we would pull 
the trigger and the rat would make a hurried 
exit out of this world— of course we could only 
do this at night. 

During the day our favourite pastime was 
getting up hot lunches and serving afternoon 
tea, and most of the soldiers became expert at 
this. Our cookstove consisted of an old bully- 
beef can with holes punched in it. In the bot- 
tom of this can we placed several small pieces 
of gunny sack, and on top of this we put sev- 
eral pieces of trench candles. When the candle 



72 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

melted and ran down over the sacking it pro- 
duced a good steady blaze and it gave out 
considerable heat — best of all, it didn't make 
any smoke, for of course smoke in the front 
line would be apt to draw shell fire. Over our 
fire we could boil the full of our mess tin of 
water and make our tea — also, we could warm 
up our rations in this way, and meat and 
vegetables tasted a lot better when they were 
hot. We also carried Oxo cubes and prepared 
coffee so we could have a nourishing drink at 
any time. 

Some time on in February preparations were 
made for a raid on the German trenches. Of- 
ficers and men consulted together, and the men 
in charge were busy drawing up plans and 
perfecting arrangements; we were very much 
excited over it, and every one hoped that they 
would be among the fortunate ones chosen to 
take part in the scrap. The 29th Battalion 
was holding the line on our right, and they 
were coming in with us on this. Finally the 
plans were given out; the raid was to cover 
about fifteen hundred yards of the enemy 
trench and the battalion scouts and bombers 
were the ones chosen to go over. The same 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 73 

number of men went from the 29th, and the 
trench mortars of each battalion protected the 
flanks of the attacking party and prevented the 
Germans in the other parts of the trench 
coming to the assistance of those attacked. 
Also, a party of bombers were stationed in the 
''Glory Hole" ready to act as reinforcements 
if they were needed — I was one of the latter 
bunch, and oh how I longed for the signal that 
would give me a chance to share in the 
fun! 

The attack was planned for 3 a.m. At the 
sound of a whistle they were to go over the 
top, enter the enemy trenches, do all the harm 
they could, and when they heard the second 
whistle come back, bringing as many prisoners 
as they possibly could. But before they went 
out, two men, Conlin and another chap, stole 
quietly out and cut the enemy's wire entangle- 
ments — they lay there for hours right under 
the noses of the Germans cutting a gap for our 
boys to go through — I assure you it was tick- 
lish work; the success of the whole enterprise 
depended on their skilful, silent work. The 
slightest noise, cough, or sneeze would mean 
their own death and the failure of our plans, 



74 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

but nothing happened and they had everything 
ready at the appointed time. 

The boys who were going over had prepared 
for it as they would for a vaudeville; they all 
had their faces blackened so they could know 
one another in the dark, and they were all al- 
lowed to arm themselves in any way they 
wished. Some carried revolvers, others the 
handles of our entrenching tools (these had 
small iron cog wheels at one end and they made 
an excellent shillalah), a few had bombs, and 
one of the boys, Macpherson was his name, 
armed himself with the cook's meat axe. 

Finally the long looked for moment arrived 
— the whistle blew and over they went — Lieu- 
tenant Maclntyre was in charge of the 28th 
boys. The wire cutters were the closest and 
they reached the trendies first — poor Conlin 
was shot as soon as he showed himself on the 
edge of the parapet, but Maclntyre got the 
man who shot him and they fell together. A 
little farther along the trench Macpherson was 
lying on the edge of the parapet just ready to 
jump in when a German came running along 
the trench shouting ''Alarm! Alarm!" Mac 
leaned over, grabbed him by the shoulder, and 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 75 

said, ''Here, sonny, that's a hell of a noise you 
are making," and with that he brought his 
meat ax do^vn on his head. The boys were all 
in now, clearing up the Huns in great shape, 
and when the whistle sounded the few that 
were alive were brought back as prisoners. 

While this was going on in the German 
trenches there was great excitement in our 
own. Our trench mortar was being worked 
energetically to keep back any German rein- 
forcements. Lieutenant ''Spud" Murphy was 
in charge of this, and his antics kept us all in 
roars of laughter — he jumped around and 
"rooted" for those bombs as though they were 
his favourite players in the National League. 
Wlien one went over, he would, like the rest of 
us, jump up on the firing-step to see it light. 
When it lit fairly in the German treneh he 
would dance around the gunner shouting, 
"That's a good one!" "That's the way to put 
them over!" "Now for another beauty! give 
them hell!" 

Well, our raid was a great success, and it 
was the biggest thing of the kind that had been 
attempted up to that time. We had a few 
casualties ; Conlin was a great pal of mine, and 



76 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

I missed him the most. Some of our boys 
were decorated; Conlin, our dead hero, won 
the D. C. M., and the medal was sent to his 
people. Lieutenant Maclntyre was awarded 
the D. S. 0., and *' Darky" Andrews, who had 
taken a leading part, also received the D. C. M. 

One of the prisoners captured was an under 
officer, and as he was wounded he was taken 
to the nearest dressing-station; while his 
wound was being looked after, an interpreter 
was talking to him, and the German said tri- 
umphantly, ''Well, you have brought me here, 
but you cannot send me over to England." 
''Oh, indeed! — and why not?" asked the in- 
terpreter. "Because Germany controls the 
water," said our prisoner proudly. "No 
troops can be brought from England now." 
"Is that so?" said our interpreter. "Well, 
sonny, you will find yourself in England by this 
time tomorrow, however you get there," and 
ho did. 

Shortly after this we had several casualties 
in Platoon 10 — two or three were killed, and 
several wounded and got their "Blighty." 
Dyer was caught by a sniper, and Tucker was 
hit in the leg by a machine gun bullet. Quite 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 77 

a few had been wounded in the company and 
one or two killed, but No. 10 was lucky — ^we 
got some reinforcements and to No. 10 came 
McMurchie, ''Fat," and McKone. McMurchie 
was a little Irishman about five feet tall with 
a great taste for rum and he didn't know what 
fear meant. He had a twin brother in another 
company and they were just like two peas in a 
pod; only his brother was quiet. Mac would 
go and line up in his brother's company when 
rum was being issued and draw his brother's 
issue, then come back to ' ' C " company and get 
his own ration, and then line up again and tell 
the Sergeant-Major that he had given his issue 
to his brother. He was a proper little devil. 
One day we were out on rest and Mac had been 
away all the day before, and this day we were 
wondering where he had gone, when, lo and 
behold, into the line of huts marched Mc- 
Murchie leading a rooster with a piece of string 
around its neck — he had swiped it off some 
Frenchwoman — whether he ever took it back I 
don't know, perhaps the cooks could tell — ^Mac 
was pretty friendly with the cooks. He was 
always getting into trouble when out of the 
line, but when in the trenches he was worth a 



78 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

dozen men, not to work, but his disregard for 
all danger made one's liair stand on end. He 
would do everything one was supposed not to 
do. He would shave in the front line when 
Fritz was shelling the trench and everybody 
else was under cover. He had a big rifle; I 
don't know where he got it, but it was bigger 
in the butt than most, and the bore was all 
worn out ; it had been fired so much that when 
he used to fire it the report was deafening; he 
used to call it ''Big Lizzie." When he was 
shaving and a shell came close and threw dirt 
all over him, he would say, ''AH right, Fritz, 
wait till I get through, I'll get Big Lizzie after 
you," and he'd stand up and fire five rounds 
rapid over at Fritz in broad daylight. Why 
he didn't get killed was a marvel — when shrap- 
nel was bursting (shrapnel shells are full of 
lead pellets and when they burst they scatter 
forward about a hundred yards) he would look 
at them straight in the face and remark, 
"That's right, Fritz, lengthen them out a bit." 
He was out on a working party one day behind 
the trench, filling sandbags, and there were one 
or two reinforcements with him, when Fritz 
started slinging some " AVhiz-bangs " over 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 79 

(these are small shells about fifteen pounds full 
of shrapnel, but they come with an awful 
speed, that's why they call them ''Whiz- 
bangs," you hear the whiz just about the same 
time that you hear the bang) ; well, Fritz was 
sending quite a few over; I guess he had 
spotted the party and the new men were kind 
of nervous. ''Aw," says Mac, as he kept on 
working, "don't bother about those things, 
there's nothing to 'em but mnd and noise — 
Ow!" and he jumped about a foot as a piece of 
shrapnel took him in the leg. Mac was absent 
for awhile down at the Casualty Clearing Sta- 
tion and had his leg fixed up; it wasn't bad. 
After he had been there awhile the Sergeant 
asked him to wash the floor; Mac refused, "Do 
you think I came out here to scrub floors?" 
says he; "I'm a fighting man." The Sergeant 
was going to have him pinched, but while he 
was away Mac sneaked out and came back to 
the battalion, absolutely refusing to go back, 
and Colonel Embury, our Colonel, who was a 
good sport, smoothed matters over and Mac 
stayed with the boys, and soon was as "right 
as rain " — he was too tough to hurt. I will 
leave him for awhile — it would take a book to 



80 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

describe all his tricks — and we will go on to 
**Fat," who came about the same time. Fat 
was a big fat good-natured kid, and he and 
Bink got quite chummy; they were both farm- 
ers before the war. Fat had a great dislike 
for machine gun tire — most of us had too, but 
Fat was the worst ; he also had a comical little 
laugh — "Tee hee, tee hee" he would go. We 
used to go out at night stringing wire in "No 
Man's Land"; every now and again Fritz 
would sweep the wire with machine gun fire, 
and directly he started sweeping we would be 
down like a flash, and wait till Fritz quit. Fat 
would be in a shell hole almost as soon as the 
first shot was fired, and would laugh at Bink 
looking for a hole to hide in. Bink would get 
sore; all you could hear was the rat-tat-tat of 
the machine gun and in between "Tee hee, tee 
hee" from Fat as he lay and watched Bink 
crawling around looking for a hole. Some of 
the boys would lie in the hole and wave their 
legs in the air hoping to get a bullet through 
them so that they could get back to "Blighty," 
but they were never lucky enough. We would 
always lose one or two men on these wiring 
parties, but we had very few killed and No. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 81 

10 's luck still held good. By the way perhaps 
you would like to know why we call England 
*' Blighty" — it seems that it comes from two 
Hindoo words meaning "My home," and as 
there were a lot of Indian soldiers out in 
France at the beginning of the war and they 
were with the regular English troops, I sup- 
pose it was passed along that way — to get a 
** Blighty" means to get a wound that takes 
you to ''Blighty." To say that a man has got 
a ''Belgique" means that he is dead. The 
boys have different sayings for everything, 
and they sound funny unless you know what 
they mean. ''Buckshee" the English troops 
call anything that you might have to spare, 
such as "Have you a buckshee razor?" mean- 
ing "Have you a spare razor?" The word 
"buckshee" comes from the Hindoo word 
"Backsheesh." Well, to continue, the other 
boy to come to No. 10 was a freak; how the 
devil he ever got in the Army beats me. He 
was deaf, and when you spoke to him you had 
to holler; also, he had a cleft palate so you 
could hardly understand him when he spoke, 
but he was a good man in the line and when 
he was on sentry, he was up on the fire-step 



82 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

looking over all the time; only at night of 
course. He used to pack along a box of am- 
munition every night and do his best to fire 
the lot before morning. When the scouts 
were out as they used to be every night, 
patrolling ''No Man's Land," the word was 
passed along in the trench and we would 
either stop firing or fire high; desultory 
fire was always kept up all night. Well, we 
could never make McKone understand that the 
scouts were out ; and he would keep on blazing 
away — at last the scouts made a kick and we 
stopped him firing when they were out — but he 
was awfully sore. "What am I here for? — I'm 
not a dummy," said he. One night he had 
been blazing away and had made Fritz sore, 
and Fritz had turned about three machine guns 
on the spot where Mac was. The bullets were 
coming around him like bees around a hive, 
but he couldn't hear them. At last he heard 
something; Corporal Banks was coming along 
the trench at the time, and Mac stopped him. 
''Say, Corporal, there's an aeroplane up there 
somewhere," and he gazed up into the sky. 
"Come down, you fool, that's machine gun 
fire," says Banks. We used to have lots of 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 83 

fun "chipping" him, but all he'd reply was 

"Aw, you go to h ." One night Bink and 

Bob were out on "a covering" party— their job 
was to take their rifle and bomb and lie out in 
front of our men as they were putting out wire 
in "No Man's Land," — the idea is to prevent 
the party from being surprised by the Ger- 
mans. It was a wet cold night, and so the of- 
ficer gave them a drink of rum before they 
went; in fact, they asked him for it. "Well, 
they crawled out and lay down, and I guess the 
rum gave them some "Dutch" courage, for 
after the boys had finished their wiring and 
gone back to the trench, Bink and Bob thought 
it would be a good scheme to crawl to the G-er- 
man lines and throw their bombs in. So 
forward they crawled through his wire till 
they got up close and heard the Fritzies jab- 
bering; the rum had about worked off by this 
time, and instead of throwing their bombs, 
they got cold feet and crawled silently back to 
our lines — I guess it's as well they did, or I 
wouldn't have their story to tell — ^they often 
laughed about it afterwards. 

Shortly after this we moved off that front 
and we took over some trenches from the Im- 



84 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

perial troops in the Ypres salient. It was just 
about the time that the Imperial troops took 
back the "International" trench to the right 
of the "Bluff," and it was a much hotter place 
than the one we were in before; we had to be 
ri^ht on the alert all the time. We were in 

there a short time and back we went to M 

for a rest, and in the meantime the Battle of 
St. Eloi commenced — it started with the 
Northumberland Fusiliers ("Fighting Fifth," 
as they were called) blowing up some mines 
under the enemy lines and occupying the craters 
and a trench — they were then relieved by the 
"Sixth Brigade, Canadians." It was all quiet 
for awhile and then the storm broke; all the 
German artillery for miles was concentrated 
on this front of about a thousand yards, and 
the men were literally blown out of their posi- 
tions. It poured rain and our aeroplanes were 
unable to take observations, with the result 
that, where at first our artillery was firing too 
far, when they shortened up, they shelled our 
own men. The Germans also concentrated 
heavy trench mortars on the craters, and after 
blowing the men to pieces all day, they at- 
tacked at night. What men were left died 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 85 

where they stood. All the bottoms of the 
craters were just a pool of thin mud, and when 
our boys were wounded they just slid down 
the sides of the craters and perished in the 
pool of mud at the bottom. Some of the 
craters were lost, and our relieving parties, 
going in at night to relieve, what they thought 
were our men, found the Germans in posses- 
sion and bomb-fights ensued. In the meantime 
the enemy artillery had a barrage across be- 
hind the craters making it almost impossible 
for men to get through alive. The 28th were 
hurried up and after spending a night in 
''Dickebush" we were taken up to ''Scottish" 
Wood in support. Woodrow, Webster, Corpo- 
ral Grimsdale, and all the company bombers 
were sent out from there, and they held one of 
the craters. After hanging on the lip of the 
crater all day under a constant rain of 
"sausages" (one hundred pounds of high ex- 
plosives in each) they tried to dig in and con- 
solidate, but they had lost half their number, 
and then the Germans attacked them from all 
sides. They worked their rifles as long as they 
could, but they were clogged with mud; and 
then fought them hand to hand — those that fell 



86 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

never rose again — slipping down into that hor- 
rible mess at the bottom. Webster saw Wood- 
row fall, and he and Grimsdale fought their 
way out ; Grim happened to find his way to our 
lines, but Webster got lost and for twenty-four 
hours, that night and the next day, he lay out 
there; in the daytime he had to lie still and 
at night he couldn't find which line was ours; 
and machine guns were spitting all ways. At 
last he crawled near our trench and heard the 
boys talking, and he came in; it was two days 
after when I saw him — ^five days before he had 
been a happy, daredevil sort of a boy — now he 
looked like a corpse with living eyes of coal. 
He never got over it, and after the Battle of 
Hooge was invalided home, a complete wreck. 
While all this was going on, "C" Company 
was brought from "Scottish" Wood to the 
communicating trench, and where we entered 
the trench was crowded with men, one bunch 
trying to get up, another stream of wounded 
coming down. As fast as men tried to get 
through the barrage, they were wiped out, and 
at last the officers decided to lose no more. 
Fritz started to shell the trench we were in, 
and a lot of the boys were hit ; our officer took 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 87 

us out in the open, and we lay there while the 
trench was being shelled— after staying there 
twenty-four hours we were relieved— but the 
struggle for the craters still went on; some- 
times our fellows holding them, and sometimes 
Fritz. At last the weather brightened, allow- 
ing us to get observation, and our artillery was 
able to work accurately; then the battle died 
down, leaving two craters in the Germans' 
hands, two in ours, and the rest a sort of ''No 
Man's Land," in which constant fighting took 
place for months ; sometimes quiet, but flaring 
up again whenever either side tried to take and 
hold the remaining craters. That was the 
Battle of St. :filoi as nearly as I can give it. 
It was the first big scrap we took part in, and 
although it wasn't a victory, nobody knows, 
but those who were there, how near we were 
to disaster, and only individual pluck kept the 
Germans back; for after the barrage went on, 
Headquarters could not get news of how things 
were going. Several officers were sent up, but 
were either killed or wounded trying to get 
through the barrage. Those who got through 
stayed to help those that were there fighting, 
as it was almost impossible to get back. It 



88 INTO THE JAWS OP DEATH 

was there that the Sixth Brigade got the name 
''The Iron Sixth." While the company I was 
in didn't do anything spectacular, I can tell 
you it was all we wanted, lying out there in 
the mud and wet, expecting any moment to see 
the Germans advancing, and all the time shells 
coming like hail. Some of the companies of 
the 28th lost heavily — I think we were the 
luckiest; but when the battalion went back to 
rest billets a lot of boys' faces were missing 
that we had been familiar with for months. 

Now that heavy fighting had commenced we 
never knew where we would be for more than 
a day at a time — we stayed in the lines till 
there was someone ready to relieve us, whether 
it was two days or ten — then we went direct to 
rest billets, and we remained there till we were 
needed again in the front lines. The billets 
were not bomb-proof, by any means. They 
were well within range of the big guns, but 
after the heavy shelling and bombing in the 
front lines they seemed like heaven. We had 
been out there two or three days when little 
Mac came to me and said, ''Say, kid, I'm on 
the track of a bomb-proof job." I said, 
"What makes you think that!" "Well," 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 89 

said lie, ''just as I came down the line I over- 
heard the old Sergeant telling another guy 
about it, and if we can get on, will you 
come?" I said, "You mutt, it all depends on 
what it is." "Oh, I thought I told you," 
says Mac, "they are calling for men to go to 
the tunnellers." "Nothing doing for this 
child!" "Now, look here," says Mac, "you've 
only got to die once, and you might better 
be buried in a sap than be blown to hell 
by a big shell, there would be more of j^ou 
left for your friends, anyway, besides a change 
is as good as a rest, and as there seems to be 
small chance of us getting any rest, we might 
just as well keep this chance." So I said, "All 
right, we can try it for a week, and then if we 
don't like being buried, we can come back to 
life; that's more than most people can do"; 
so away went Mac to tell the Sergeant that we 
would go. He said, "Well, I'm sorry to lose 
you boys, but I don't blame you for wanting 
to get away from what we have been going 
through lately, and any time you want to come 
back to the old boys we will only be too glad 
to have you." He told us to report to a 
branch of the Eoyal Engineers known as the 



90 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

250th Tunnelling Company. They were located 
in the Kemmil dugouts, so away Mac and I 
went to old Kemmil, where we had been all the 
previous winter. 

When we reached the line of dugouts we 
stuck our head into one and asked where we 
would find the officer in charge. A voice from 
a far corner called out, ''Oui, the bleeder is in 
the end dugout, old cock!" We found the 
officer's dugout without any trouble and re- 
ported for duty. He told us that we would not 
be needed till night, and that we had better go 
and find a dugout to rest in, so away we went 
back to the place where we had inquired for 
Headquarters. It was our first brush up 
against the English Tommy, and we were 
anxious to see more of him. We went into the 
dugout and found about a dozen men lying 
around, some of them rolled in their blankets 
trying to sleep, and others smoking. I went 
over beside the chap who had answered my 
first question, and after telling him who I was 
and what I was there for, he made room for 
me and I sat down. He was a funny-looking 
little chap about the build of a wooden tooth- 
pick, but he looked as if he was made of steel 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 91 

wire. We soon struck up a conversation, and 
his "Cockney" sure did sound funny to me; 
he was one of the sappers, and when he found 
that I had left the Infantry to join them he 
was disgusted. "Well," said he, "you are a 
bloomin' ass. Wliy, blime me, mite, this here's 
the worst bleedin' job in the Army; a man digs 
till the sweat rolls off, and all he gets for it 
is a bleedin' shilling, and he has to give six- 
pence of that to the old woman; blime, it 
doesn't leave ye eiijugh for bacca, and all the 
fellas think this is a bomb-proof job — why, 
blime, you dig a. tl sweat for days, and Fritz 
sends along a blinkin' torpedo and fills up the 
tunnel, and there's all your hard work gone to 
'ell, and you with it too if you 'appen to be 
around, ' ' and believe me I found out that most 
of what he told me was true, and sapping was 
no bomb-proof job. Well, we sat around all 
day enjoying the conversation of our Cockney 
friends. I found that my new friend was nick- 
named "Skinny," and during the next few 
months he took a great liking to Mac and me, 
and he stuck around with us most of the time. 
That night at 8 o 'clock the Sergeant in charge 
came around and detailed eight of us to go up 



92 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

to the sap, — Mac, Skinny, and I were among 
those chosen,^-so we started off to a place 
known as "S. P. 13" (Strong Point No. 13). 
Skinny was in the lead, as he had been there 
before. We went through about a mile and a 
half of communicating trench, and there we en- 
countered three or four infantrymen bound for 
the front lines. The bullets were whizzing 
over our heads, and once in a while a shell 
dropped near us, but nothing happened till we 
had to come up out of the trench and cross an 
open space. The infantrymen were in the lead, 
and almost as soon as we struck the open one 
of them ''got it" in the head. Skinny was in 
front of me, and he stopped so suddenly that 
I said, ''What's wrong. Skinny?" He said, 
"Blime, but he's got it; I wonder how many 
blinldn' kids the poor devil's left." The poor 
lad was killed instantly and we picked him up 
and laid him on one side with his cap over his 
face — the stretcher bearers would find him and 
carry him back of the lines. We continued on 
our way, and Skinny, paying no more attention 
to flying bullets than he would to flies, led us 
to the sap where we were to begin work. At 
the entrance to this particular sap was an im- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 93 

mense shaft leading down 107 feet, and shoot- 
ing out from this shaft were two main tunnels 
— these tunnels were four feet high and about 
three in width, and they ran under ''No Man's 
Land" and past the first line of German 
trenches, the object being to reach a small wood 
and lay a mine under some pill-boxes that were 
causing us a lot of trouble. These pill-boxes 
were machine gun emplacements made of con- 
crete, and our heavy shells had no effect on 
them. Our only chance of getting them was to 
blow them up with a mine. When I went in, 
there was still quite a distance to go, for the 
wood lay behind the second line of German 
trenches. 

I was set to work on one of these tunnels, 
and using pick and shovel seemed mighty hard 
at first ; what made it harder to stand was the 
lack of fresh air — there was no place for the 
air to get in excepting through the main shaft, 
and that was about four hundred yards away. 
Then too, we could never rest ourselves by 
standing upright, and the constant bending of 
the back was torture until we got used to it. 
However, our shift only lasted for eight hours, 
and then we went out on rest for twenty-four 



94 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

hours, and our rest billets were three miles 
back, so they were fairly quiet. Altogether the 
work was a pleasant change when our muscles 
got hardened to it ; and there was always some- 
thing interesting turning up. Of course the 
Germans had their tunnels too, and they were 
trying to reach our lines. Often we could hear 
each other working and sometimes one party 
would send in a torpedo to block the other's 
tunnel. I remember the first one they sent us. 
That day I was working at the bottom of the 
shaft hitching sandbags to the rope by which 
they were pulled to the top. Skinny was com- 
ing down the ladder in the shaft, and when he 
was about ten feet from the bottom, the tor- 
pedo was fired. It just missed our tunnel and 
the concussion was so great that it gave us a 
great shaking up. Poor Skinny lost his hold 
on the ladder and fell into two feet of water. 
I was scared stiff, for I didn't know what had 
happened, but when I caught sight of Skinny 
sitting in the water I just roared. Skinny sat 
there with his head above water making no 
attempt to move, but when I laughed he looked 
up indignantly and said, ''Blime, mite, you'd 
cackle if a fellar broke his bleedin' neck," and 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 95 

then while I continued laughing he cursed the 
Germans with every variety of oath to which 
he could lay his tongue, vowing what he was 
going to do to get even, but all the time sitting 
there in the water. Finally he came to his 
senses, and jumping up hurriedly he made a 
bee-line for the ladder and began to climb. I 
said, ''Where the devil are you going to. 
Skinny?" He called back: ''Do you think I'm 
such a bleedin' fool as to stay down here and 
get buried alive? I don't intend to be buried 
till I'm dead." He urged me to go with him, 
but I figured that the Germans would expect one 
torpedo to do the trick and they wouldn't be 
likely to waste a second one, so instead of going 
out I went back along the tunnel to see if any 
damage had been done. I found a little loose 
earth knocked down — that was all the harm it 
did, except to give us a good scare. 

Our work went steadily on, and gradually 
our backs got like iron and we didn't mind the 
everlasting bending. In our twenty-four hours 
at rest billets we had lots of fun. Mac 
and I were the only Canadians in the bunch, 
and the English Tommy used us "white." 
About this time there was great excitement 



96 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

over some German spies that were supposed to 
be in our lines, and there was a reward offered 
of £20 and fourteen days ' leave to any one who 
would succeed in capturing one of these spies. 
We were all warned to keep a sharp lookout 
for them, and our own officers were forbidden 
to go around through the lines without an 
escort. Several spies were caught masquerad- 
ing in our uniforms and of course they were 
shot; a spy stands very little show of getting 
off if once he is caught, and it is a brave man's 
job in France. Of course we have our men 
behind the German lines, and I don't suppose 
any one will ever know all that our secret 
service has done for us there. 

We were all keeping a sharp lookout, and 
one night one of the boys caught a German try- 
ing to crawl through our front lines, he made 
him prisoner, and maybe he wasn't elated over 
his capture, so he marched him proudly down 
through the long line of trench to our Head- 
quarters; but, on getting there, imagine his 
surprise when his German prisoner began to 
talk and joke with the officers; he was one of 
our own secret service men and was just re- 
turning from a trip through the German lines 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 97 

— ^he thought it was too good a joke to miss, so 
he let himself be captured. I had heard all 
this, and I made up my mind not to be fooled, 
but one night I thought sure I had the real 
thing. Mac, Skinny, and I were coming off 
shift at 2 A.M., and in the communication 
trench we met an officer without an escort. We 
saluted as we passed, and he said, ''Good- 
night, boys." Mac whispered, "I believe he's 
a spy." Skinny said, **Blime, I believe he is 
too." We talked it over about fifteen minutes 
and then we decided to follow him, so we gave 
chase and caught up with him just outside a 
line of huts where there was a sentry posted; 
when we came up he was talking and laughing 
with the sentry, so we stood in the background 
and listened, and what do you think — if that 
guy wasn't the officer in charge of the guard, 
so our fourteen days' leave and our £20 was 
all shot in the head — that cured my spy 
catching. 

When on rest we were billeted in some of 
the little villages behind the lines, and we 
struck up quite an acquaintance with the 
French peasants living there. ''Old Madame" 
was a particular friend of ours, and we got to 



98 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

know her best because she made her living by 
serving lunches to the soldiers ; she had a nick- 
name for each of us, and if any one was miss- 
ing she had to hear all about it. Many a pleas- 
ant evening we spent in her little home. A 
bunch of us would go together, and we would 
take along our mandolin, banjo, and mouth 
organ, and have a little concert ; Madame would 
sit there and smile, not understanding a word 
we said, but enjoying seeing us having a good 
time — another thing, it was always warm 
there, and that was something that our billets 
never were. 

But we had a great time trying to get enough 
French so that we could ask for what we 
wanted to eat and many laughable incidents 
occurred in our struggles to make Madame 
understand. For instance, one night Skinny 
wanted eggs, and he tried in every way to make 
his wnnts known, but Madame failed to get his 
meaning, and finally the boy got desperate, so 
jumping up, he started to run around the room 
cackling like a hen. He got the eggs all right, 
and I think he earned them; but it was so 
funny that we nearly rolled off our chairs 
laughing. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 99 

To make things better, a party of twenty-five 
Canadians came to the tunnellers and we had 
some good old times together; but Mac and* 
Skinny were still my best pals; many's the 
prank we played together. One of our fa- 
vourite ones was to work the officer in charge 
for an extra ration of rum. The British 
Tommy was given his ration of rum as soon as 
he came up from the sap, but we Canadians 
had to wait for ours till we reached our rest 
billets, and it was served to us there by one 
of our own officers. The only exception made 
was in favour of those who had been working in 
a wet part of the sap ; for instance, at the bottom 
of the shaft there was often two feet of water, 
and at various places along the tunnel where 
we had struck springs the water almost flooded 
us out; it kept two pumps going all the time 
to make the place dry enough to work in. Well, 
the men on these pumps (two on each) and the 
one at the shaft were served out with rubber 
boots and oilskins, and these were the only 
Canadians who received their ration of rum 
from the Imperial officer. Usually one of our 
trio was chosen to work on either of these wet 
jobs, and he would line up for his rum ration 



100 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

— after getting it, he would hurry out and 
hand over his oilskins to one of us, and we 
would slip them on and take our place in the 
line — after we had been served we did the same 
trick, and usually the three of us succeeded in 
getting our extra ration of rum. Of course the 
officer would catch on after awhile and would 
chase us out, but we worked it on every new 
officer. It wasn't that we cared so much for 
the rum, but it was the fun of getting some- 
thing that we were not supposed to have. It 
was the same with our money ration — we were 
only allowed fifteen francs every two weeks 
while we were in France, and the rest of our 
pay was kept for us by the military. Now, 
fifteen francs did not begin to get us what we 
thought we needed, and many's the scheme we 
tried to get at the balance. Finally we hit on 
one that worked pretty well. Mac made over 
"so much a month" to the family of one of 
the English boys in the 28th, they cashed the 
cheque and forwarded the money to their boy, 
and he handed it over to Mac; we were having 
a ''whale of a time" on his extra money, and 
one day we were expecting our remittance 
from England. Mac met some battalion boys 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 101 

who told him that Sergeant Banks had the 
money for him; little Mac was on a carrying 
party that night when he met the boys, and he 
hurried back to tell me the good news. I was 
working above the shaft, and Mac and I sat 
in the shelter of an old wall, and with the bul- 
lets buzzing around us we planned how we 
would spend that money. Finally we thought 
we had lost enough time, so I went back to 
work and Mac started down ''Suicide Eoad" 
for another load of sandbags and planks for 
the tunnel. He had about a mile to go, and the 
road he was on got its name from the fierce 
shelling that Fritzie gave it every night. If 
you have ever been out in a bad hailstorm you 
can perhaps form some idea of how thick the 
bullets are when Fritzie turns on his guns and 
sweeps a road. Well, I had only been working 
an hour or so underground when I heard some 
one at the top of the shaft calling my name. I 
answered and he said, "Come on up. Jack, I 
want you." I hurried up the ladder and found 
one of the 28th boys waiting for me. I said, 
''Hello! what's the matter, old chap?" He 
said, "Jack, little Mac's got it." "Little Mao, 
oh no, not little Mac !" I cried. "Why, he was 



102 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

here with me only a little while ago." ''Yes, 
I know," he said; ''he was on his way back 
with the first load when it got him — still, he 
isn't badly hit, and he sure did act funny when 
ho got it. This is how it happened: we were 
walking down the road with our loads when 
Mac stopped suddenly and said, 'Boys, I be- 
lieve I'm hit; I felt a stinging pain go through 
my leg. He felt around and walked a few 
steps, and said, 'No, I guess I'm all right. 
But, gee, it was a close call!' He hadn't gone 
far when he felt something trickling down his 
leg, and slipping his hand inside his trousers 
he moved it around the spot where the pain 
had been, then he pulled it out and held it up ; 
it was covered with blood. As soon as he saw 
the blood Mac grabbed his leg and limped like 
everything. He dropped his load right there 
and made a bee-line for the dressing station. 
As he hobbled down the road he called, 'Good- 
bye, boys, it's Blighty for mine.' Of course I 
laughed at what the boy told me of little Mac, 
but all the time I felt an ache in my heart, 
for something told me I would never see my 
brave little pal again, and I never did. He did 
not get a "Blighty" after all, but was sent to 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 103 

our base hospital at Le Havre. When he came 
back to the lines I was gone, and he went back 
to the battalion; he ''went west" from Vimy 
Ridge, where so many of our brave boys fell. 
Well, I hunted up Skinny and told him about 
Mac, and when the shift was over and we 
started off to our rest billets we both felt 
mighty blue ; if we had known that we were to 
be separated the very next day we would have 
felt still worse. But that's one thing that's 
good about the Army — you never know what's 
coming, and after it has happened there is no 
spare time for regrets. When I said ''G-ood- 
bye" to Skinny, he said, "It's a bleedin' shime 
that you 'arve to go, mite. Those bloomin' 
'Eadquarter blokes doesn't know what they're 
doin' 'arf the time. It's blinkin' 'ard to lose 
both you and Mac, but 'up the line with the best 
of luck,' old cock." But I must explain why 
I had to go. An order came asking all Cana- 
dians who were working with the Royal Engi- 
neers (which was an Imperial unit) to transfer 
at once to the Canadian Engineers at Ypres. 
This did not sound very good to us, as the 
Ypres salient was known as a pretty hot place. 
However, as military rules say, ' ' Obey first and 



104 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

complain afterwards," there was nothing for 
us to do but go. We were sorry, also, to leave 
before the completion of our mine at Kemmil — 
but we heard afterwards that when it was set 
off it turned the wood literally upside down. 
When we arrived at Ypres we found things 
very different to what they were at Kemmil — 
instead of mine laying we were put into a pro- 
tection sap; this was only twenty feet down 
and consisted of a network of tunnels for the 
protection of our own lines against the German 
sappers. My first duty was on "listening- 
post" in one of these tunnels, the hole where I 
was being just large enough to lie in, and it 
seemed almost like being buried alive. Here I 
did not get my twenty-four hours' rest as at 
Kemmil, but I worked on a six-hour shift and 
had only ten hours off ; even then we were not 
sent back to rest billets, but had to stay in the 
dugout at the top of the shaft. At the end of 
seven days we were supposed to be sent back 
to rest billets, and another shift would take our 
place. Fritzie had been unusually quiet since 
we came, and we began to think that the stories 
we heard were greatly exaggerated. 
However, on the morning of the seventh day 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 105 

we changed our minds. We bad gone to work 
at eight o 'clock feeling unusually good — we ex- 
pected to be relieved at seven that night, and 
we had been promised a seven days' leave to 
Blighty, so I could hardly wait for the day to 
pass. Instead of being put on ''listening-post" 
this morning, the Corporal in charge took me 
with him — we went down a long tunnel till we 
reached the end, and the Corporal put a listen- 
ing-tube to his ear; he listened a few minutes, 
and then handed it to me and whispered, "Do 
you hear anything ? " I said, ' ' Yes, I hear some 
one shovelling." He said, ''I heard them yes- 
terday, and I think they are close enough for us 
to get now, we will lay a torpedo for them 
here, " so we got to work to dig a place for our 
torpedo, and after working for half an hour or 
so our candles went out. Then we noticed that 
the number of shells falling above us had 
greatly increased — we lit our candles again, but 
it was no use — there seemed to be a terrific 
bombardment on and the concussion was so 
great that we could not keep our lights going. 
Fritzie was certainly making up for lost time. 
The Corporal said, "Well, Jack, we might just 
as well go up and see what is doing," so we 



106 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

started back to the shaft ; our candles were out, 
so we had to grope our way along. We had not 
gone far when we heard some one calling for 
help. Following the sound, we came to a bunch 
of men belonging to the infantry ; they had come 
down for protection from the shell fire, and a 
shell had blown in the entrance to their tunnel. 
Not being used to the network of tunnels, they 
were completely lost. We guided them out to 
the main shaft, and it was still intact, so they 
went up; then the Corporal said, "I wonder if 
there are any more back there?" I said, "I 
don't know, but I think we had better have a 
look," so we went back and after searching 
every tunnel and not finding any one, we decided 
to go out ourselves, and we started back along 
the shaft. We were feeling our way along with 
the shells dropping overhead like hail, when all 
at once two "Krupps" landed on the tunnel just 
over my head ; there was a terrific explosion, the 
props of the tunnel gave way, and in another 
instant I found myself choked with dust and 
half buried under a pile of dirt. The Corporal 
was crawling along three or four yards ahead, 
and in the darkness he could not see what had 
happened. As soon as I could get my breath I 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 107 

yelled, "Hey! Corporal, come back." He said, 
"What's the matter!" I said, "By golly! I 
have half of Belgium on my back. " So he came 
back and pulled me out, — my back was badly 
strained, but otherwise I was none the worse, — 
but we both realized now that things up above 
must be getting pretty serious, and once more 
we started for the shaft. The Corporal was 
ahead, and he called out, ' ' Say, Jack, we are in 
the devil of a fix now!" I said, "What's up?" 
He said, "Those confounded Boches have blown 
in the top of our sap-head. ' ' This was a serious 
matter, for it meant cutting off our supply of 
air as well as our chance for escape — it would 
be bad enough to be killed in a fair fight, but we 
didn't relish being buried alive; however, we 
would not give up without a struggle, and we 
began searching the nearby tunnels for a shovel. 
In the darkness I heard some one moving, and 
I said, "Who's there?" A familiar voice said, 
"Who in hell do you think it is?" I said, 
"Nobby! is that you? What the mischief are 
you doing?" He said, "I'm looking for what 

you never can find when you need it, a d 

shovel." The lad was one of our tunnellers, 
and we were glad to have his company and also 



108 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

Ms help in the *' digging-out " process. Not 
finding a shovel, we commenced work with our 
hands — after we had been working for half an 
hour Nobby grabbed me and whispered, *'Do 
you see those lights!" — I turned around, and 
there, about fifty yards away and coming to- 
wards us, were about a dozen lights. We talked 
it over with the Corporal and decided they must 
be Germans who had broken through the tunnel, 
so the Corporal said, "One of you boys stay 
here and dig; and the other two will go back 
and stop them," but we made him stay, and 
Nobby and I went to meet the Boches. There 
was a branch tunnel about thirty yards away, 
and we hoped to waylay them there; we were 
armed with revolvers and their lights made 
them good targets. We reached the branch 
tunnel just before they did, and we had a lively 
little scrap with the first two — the others put 
out their lights when they heard the pistol shots 
— anyway, they were several yards back and 
they were in no hurry to get into the fun. We 
lay there and waited for them, and after things 
had been quiet for a few minutes they lit their 
lights and came on — fortunately the tunnel was 
only wide enough for one man, but all the same 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 109 

we were looking for a lively time — they were ten 
yards away when there came an awful explo- 
sion ; a shell had burst directly over their heads. 
All I remember was a blinding cloud of dust and 
a gust of wind as our tunnel was blown in, and 
once more I was buried. We scrambled out and 
turned to look for our foes, but they had re- 
ceived the full force of the blow and were safely 
buried ; so we thanked our lucky stars and went 
back to our digging. When we reached our 
Corporal, we found that he had already dug his 
way out into the shaft. We crawled out, and 
looking up we discovered three more boys at the 
top of the shaft — these belonged to the machine 
gun crew who had taken up their position there, 
but a heavy shell had demolished their gun and 
buried the men — they were just digging them- 
selves out when we appeared, and we gave them 
quite a surprise. One of them said when he saw 
us, ''Well, where the devil did you come from?" 
I suppose he thought that because we came from 
below we must have some connection with his 
Satanic Majesty. Well, we climbed up to where 
the boys were and gave them a hand at the dig- 
ging; finally we made a hole large enough to 
let in a little air and then we all lay down and 



110 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

rested. We were almost dead for want of air, 
for we had been buried for four hours, and we 
did not know what might await us once we got 
out. After we rested up a little, we finished our 
digging and crawled out. We found ourselves 
in a large shell hole, the former trench being 
blown away. The ground was being swept by 
machine guns and heavy shells, and it was not 
healthy to rubber around very much. There 
was an officer in charge of the machine gun 
crew, and finally he found a spot where there 
was a slight protection, and he took a look 
around and this is what he saw; the line of 
trenches we had left there in the morning were 
entirely blotted, and the ground, as far as he 
could see, was literally riddled with shell holes. 
Our boys had either been killed, wounded, or 
taken prisoners, and our first and second lines 
were in the hands of the Germans; however, 
their advance had been checked, and now, before 
going any farther, let me explain that this is 
known now as the Third Battle of Ypres, and the 
history is familiar to all. It was here that the 
1st Division of Canadians made their heroic 
stand in 1915, just one year previous. But to 
come back to our present plight. We were at a 



INTO TW^ JAWS OF DEATH 111 

loss to know what to do, for we had no means of 
knowing how far the Germans had penetrated 
our lines ; but we knew that if their first wave of 
reinforcements ever came up, they would surely^ 
get us, so there seemed to be just one thing to 
do, and that was to make a dash for our sup- 
ports — the Germans who had come over were 
taking what shelter they could in the shell holes, 
but they were lying as low as possible, on ac- 
count of the fierceness of our shell fire. It 
really seemed as though every gun we had was 
trained on that spot, and the fire was coming 
from three sides. One of the 28th boys who was 
watching the battle from a neighbouring hill 
said that more shells fell to the minute in this 
battle than in any he had ever seen, and cer- 
tainly that is the way it seemed to us ; there was 
just one chance in a thousand of our getting 
through, but the idea of staying and giving our- 
selves up never entered our heads. 

It took quite a bit of courage to make the first 
dash, but at 2.30 we started out over the shell- 
swept ground. The shell holes were only from 
ten to twenty feet apart, but I assure you it 
seemed quite far enough. We made a quick 
sprint for the first one and landed in on the 



112 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

backs of three or four Germans ; they were lying 
facing our lines, and hadn't expected any one 
from the rear. "We had them finished before 
they got over their surprise and none of us were 
hurt in this scrap — so we made a bolt for the 
next hole. However, we were not so lucky this 
time, and before we reached the hole two of our 
boys went down ; we dared not stop to see how 
badly they were hurt, but plunged into the 
shelter of the hole. Here we were outnumbered 
two to one, but our attack from the rear gave us 
the advantage; still it came near being my 
finish, for my revolver jammed, and a big Boche 
made a lunge at me with his bayonet — I dropped 
my revolver, escaped his bayonet by making a 
quick side-step, grabbed his rifle, and hung on 
for dear life. We rocked to and fro, and all at 
once it occurred to me to use my feet — so I lifted 
one foot and let him have it right in the stomach. 
He let go his hold on the rifle and sat down as 
suddenly as if he was shot, while I lost my 
balance and went sprawling in the other direc- 
tion. I don't know which of us would have 
recovered first, but one of our boys settled the 
combat by blowing the big Boche 's head off. 
.Our three lads had cleared up all the others and 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 113 

we had time to think of our own condition. We 
were a very sorry-looking outfit; we all had 
wounds and bruises which we hadn't felt at the 
time they were received; our tunics and caps 
had been left in the sap, and the few clothes we 
had on were torn and plastered with mud, our 
faces were streaked with dirt and blood, and we 
were ' ' all in. " I hadn't known any of the boys 
before except the Corporal and Nobby, and poor 
Nobby was the first one shot. Well, we looked 
after each other's wounds, and then we rested 
for awhile ; when our strength came back a little, 
we started out again. We would have stayed 
longer only we had no idea how far we were 
from our lines, and we felt sure that German 
reinforcements would come up at dark. We 
went out in single file and not too close to- 
gether, but our next hole was farther away and 
just before the first one reached it a shell burst 
directly over it ; two of the boys were killed and 
the Germans in the hole were blown to atoms ; 
the officer and myself were thrown a little dis- 
tance and badly stunned, but finally we managed 
to reach the hole. We were the only ones left, 
and we lay there bruised and shaken. We were 
pretty well discouraged over the loss of our 



114 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

other brave lads, and it was quite a wliile before 
we felt like venturing out again; the only re- 
deeming feature was the fact that the shell 
which had killed our boys had also cleared the 
hole of whole Germans. Well, at last we made 
another start, and we had almost reached a hole 
when the officer, who was behind me, shouted 
"Look out, lad, there's another coming!" We 
leaped for the hole and landed at the bottom 
only to find ourselves covered by a dozen Ger- 
man rifles ; I sure thought I had a through ticket 
for the next world with no "stop-overs" al- 
lowed, especially when I noticed a big ' ' square- 
head" in the act of bringing a "potato-masher" 
(hand grenade) down on my head. I dodged 
him as he fetched it down, and just then the 
German officer in charge of the bunch bawled 
out some command. They all lowered their 
rifles and began talking in an excited manner, 
they were evidently trying to decide what to do 
with us, and the officer said, "Well, I guess our 
game is up, boy." I said, "I guess it is"; and 
really I didn't much care if they finished me 
right then. I knew I had made them pay the 
price anyway — we were out of ammunition and, 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 115 

besides, we were too much "all in" to put up 
any kind of a scrap. 

Well, they evidently decided to take us pris- 
oners, for we were searched, and then two of 
them were detailed to take us back — the only 
reason we w^ere spared was because it is quite 
a feather in a German's cap to take a British 
officer prisoner — they are always rewarded for 
it. Well, they started us out at once over the 
same road we had come, and we went from shell 
hole to shell hole as before, but now that we 
were under German escort no one "potted" us, 
and in spite of the shell fire we reached what 
had been "No Man's Land." As we crossed 
this I noticed a funny thing. A company of 
German reinforcements were being brought up, 
perhaps a hundred in all; the officer in charge 
was bareheaded, and he carried a revolver and 
a stick of some kind. Instead of leading his men 
as our officers do, he walked behind and a little 
to one side, really on their flank. They couldn't 
hear his commands and he tried to show them 
where to go by pointing with his stick, but he 
kept his revolver levelled on the men all the 
time. As I watched them, a couple of our "Big 



116 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

Lizzie" shells burst right over them; when the 
smoke cleared away there wasn't one of the 
bunch to be seen. Well, we crossed ''No Man's 
Land" and came to where the German trenches 
had been, but they were as level as our own. 
Finally we struck a communication trench and 
the going was a little safer. The trench was 
crowded with Germans, and they lined up in 
either side to let us pass. But here I had 
another narrow escape; the Boche's hatred of 
the British is such that they cannot resist giv- 
ing vent to it when they have one in their power, 
and as we passed one big brute made a lunge 
at me with his bayonet. Fortunately, he missed 
his aim a little and the bayonet passed through 
the loose front of my shirt, but I felt the cold 
steel on my flesh — the guard said nothing to 
him. Another thing I noticed on my way out 
was the treatment a wounded German received 
from the comrade who was taking him out — the 
man was wounded through the head and he was 
evidently dizzy from pain and weakness, for he 
rolled from one side of the trench to the other 
like a drunken man — instead of carrying him as 
our men would do, or, at least, putting an arm 
round him to steady his steps, that brute walked 




GENERAL KETCHEN 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 117 

behind, and when the wounded man would stop, 
wanting to sit down and rest, I saw the brute 
take that poor man by the collar, jerk him up, 
and land him a couple of kicks. This of course 
sent the man running and sprawling down the 
trench, and this is the way they made their way 
out. 

Well, we went on till we came to a German 
strong point, and here we found fifteen of our 
boys that had been captured earlier in the day; 
when we came on the scene they were being 
photographed by the Germans. The Germans 
allow their soldiers to carry cameras and almost 
every soldier has one ; we had at least a dozen 
levelled at us that day — they were evidently 
taking pictures to send back to Germany — 
"Prisoners we have captured" would no doubt 
be the title. 

They kept us hanging around here for half an 
hour, still under our own shell fire, and then we 
were marched back about three miles. Our first 
stop was beside an old Belgian church, and here 
we were taken over by an escort of Prussian 
Lancers, and for the first time I realized that I 
was really a German prisoner. We were herded 
together like a flock of sheep and driven ahead 



118 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

of our captors; we were made to go ten miles 
before they allowed us to stop, but to add 
variety to our otherwise tedious march, when 
our escort wanted a little fun they would put 
spurs to their horses and ride pellmell through 
our little bunch. It was great sport to see us 
dash in all directions tumbling over one another 
in our efforts to escape being trodden dowTi by 
the horses ; no wonder they laughed and shouted 
in their glee ! And it was on a par with other 
things they did on that trip. We passed 
through several small Belgian villages, and 
when the Belgian women saw us coming, they 
ran out with jugs of water, chocolate, and ciga- 
rettes, but our escort met them and refused to 
allow them to give us anything. They were 
very plucky, and some of them dashed in past 
the guards, and these inhuman beasts known as 
Prussian Guards levelled their lances and made 
at the girls. Sometimes they missed; a water 
jug carried by one of the girls saved her, but I 
saw three women run through the body by these 
devils, and all because they wished to do an act 
of kindness to men who were wounded. The 
first thing we do ^^dth our prisoners is to feed 
them and dress their wounds, but these are the 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 119 

last things a German thinks of doing. Well, the 
same thing happened in all the villages, only we 
warned the girls away when we saw how they 
would be treated. I also noticed that the Bel- 
gians were not allowed on the sidewalk when a 
German was passing; if they did not get off, 
they were knocked off. 

Finally we were halted in one of the villages 
and herded ijito a filthy horse stable. There 
were about thirty in the bunch and most of us 
were wounded; we had not even had a drink 
since we were captured, so we were pretty much 
''all in." We slept on the floor of the stable 
that night, and next morning some German 
guards came along and picked us up. For 
breakfast we were thrown four loaves of Ger- 
man bread and a pail of water was set inside 
the door. After breakfast we were lined up on 
the street, and a German officer who spoke a 
little English came along and asked us ques- 
tions. He took our name and number and also 
the name of the unit to which we belonged. He 
said he was doing this so that he might report 
our capture to the military authorities in Lon- 
don, but he had another reason. After he got 
through he chose two from each unit, lined them 



120 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

up, and inarched them off to a large building. 
I happened to be one of the number. The build- 
ing where we were taken was occupied by a 
German general and his staff. "We were put in 
a small room and two at a time marched out 
for an interview. 

The first ones taken belonged to a machine 
gun crew ; they were conducted into a long room 
at the far end of which sat the General and two 
interpreters. Along each side of the room was 
a line of Prussian Guards. The officer who had 
charge of the boys could speak English fairly 
well, and instead of taking them to where the 
General was, he sat down with them at a small 
table just inside the door. He appeared very 
friendly, and offered them cigars, cigarettes, 
and wine. The boys were cute enough to know 
why they were offered wine, and they ' ' declined 
with thanks" but they took the smokes. The 
officer asked them questions about Canada and 
appeared very much interested in our country, 
he talked for half an hour and never mentioned 
war ; then he asked them to go up to where the 
General was sitting. On the table in front of 
the General was a map of the front line 
trencbes, and through the interpreter the Gen- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 121 

eral proceeded to pump the boys for informa- 
tion. This is a sample of the questions he asked 
them: 

Interpreter : ' ' Show me, on the map, the posi- 
tion your machine gun was holding on the Ypres 
salient. ' ' 

Boy: *'I am sorry, Sir, but I can't read a 
map." 

He asked him several more questions of a 
similar nature and received unsatisfactory re- 
plies. Then he said, ' ' Now, give me an idea of 
how many guns were holding the Ypres 
salient." The lad thought for a minute and 
then said, ''Sir, as near as I could guess, it was 
about a million and a half." The General let 
a roar out of him like a mad lion, and two of 
the Prussian Guards grabbed the boys and, 
dragging them to the end of the room, threw 
them out of the door and do^vn the short flight 
of steps at the entrance. I saw them pass the 
door of the room where I was sitting, and said, 
"Hully gee! what the Sam Hill are they doing 
with those chaps I" Sandy said, ''Evidently 
they are not wanted In there." But the boys 
didn't seem to be at all displeased over the 
treatment they received, for they landed laugh- 



122 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

ing, and as we went in I heard one say, ''We 
slipped one over tliem that time, eh?" 

A young Scotchman and myself w^ere the next 
ones called, and we represented the sappers. 
The same officer brought us in and treated us as 
he did the first two ; we helped ourselves to the 
cigars and cigarettes, but did not think it wise 
to touch the wine (Scotty said afterwards that' 
it was the only time in his life he ever refused a 
drink). After having a smoke, we were taken 
up before the General. Scotty was a comical 
chap, very ready-witted, and we had arranged 
that he should do all the talking. The first 
question asked was, "Where was the sap you 
were working in?" Scotty looked up very 
stupidly, and said, "I don't understand you, 
Sir." The interpreter said, "Where was the 
mine you dug underground ? ' ' 

Scotty : " Oh yes, I did that for a living before 
I joined the Army." 

Interpreter: "Then show me on this map 
where the sap was." 

Scotty : "I don't know of any sap in the front 
line. ' ' 

Interpreter: "But you said you belonged to 
the miners ! ' ' 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 123 

Scotty: "Yes, but I was not working on a 
mine in the front line." 

Interpreter : "Then what were you doing?" 

Scotty: "Well, it was like this ; I was only in 
the trenches twice, the first time our Corporal 
put me on a fatigue party and I was carrying 
up sandbags and rations." 

Interpreter : "Is that all you did!" 

Scotty: "Yes, Sir." 

Interpreter : ' ' Then what were you working at 
the second time you were in the lines?— you 
were surely put in a sap this time." 

I could see that both the General and the 
interpreter were getting quite peeved, but 
Scotty answered smilingly : "I will tell you what 
I did. The Sergeant in charge gave me a long 
stick with a nail in the end, and I had this stick 
in one hand and a sandbag in the other, and 
my work was to go through the trenches pick- 
ing up all the paper, cigarette boxes, and tin 
cans. ' ' When this speech was interpreted to the 
General, the old boy was wild. I think he would 
gladly have put an end to us right there, but he 
only shouted an order to the guards, and we 
were hustled to the door and kicked out. When 
we picked ourselves up, we sat down on the 



124 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

steps and had a good laugh. Evidently the 
General was not satisfied with the information 
he received, for none of the others were taken 
in. We were all taken back to the stable and 
left there till the next morning, then we were 
marched off to the railway station and loaded 
on a train for Germany. 

We travelled in cattle and box cars, and we 
did not sit up to see the sights because all of us 
were wounded or injured in some way. My back 
was badly strained when I was buried in the sap 
and I was bruised from head to foot. I had had 
nothing to eat all day excepting the small piece 
of black bread given to us in the morning. It 
was about 9 p.m. when we made our first stop 
in Germany, and this was at a large prison camp 
near Dulmen, Westphalia. Dulmen is a beauti- 
ful large city; and the camp is two miles out. 
At first sight a prison camp looks very much 
like a chicken ranch; the high wire fences 
around the whole enclosure and the little frame 
huts in the centre all carry out the idea. But 
when you get in, there is a vast difference, the 
outside fence is fourteen feet high, and of barb- 
wire with the barbs poisoned; three yards in, 
there is another fence, a low one this time, to 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 125 

prevent the ' ' chickens ' ' getting under, and this 
is made of live wire. In between these fences 
there is a line of German guards, each one hav- 
ing his own beat. The centre of the camp is 
divided into small blocks, each with its fourteen- 
foot fence of poisoned wire ; there are six huts 
in each block and about fifty prisoners quar- 
tered in each hut. When I was there the camp 
contained about three thousand prisoners — 
French, Eussian, English, and a few Canadians. 
But, to go back to my arrival. As we were 
marched into the camp we were a pretty sorry- 
looking lot. The old prisoners saw us coming, 
and rushed back to their huts and brought us 
out some food. The new prisoners w^ere not 
allowed to mingle with the old ones until they 
had been two months in camp — I suppose this 
was to prevent any news getting in — so in order 
to do anything for us, the old prisoners had to 
catch us on our way through. Well, they 
brought us, from the contents of their Eed 
Cross parcels, hardtack, biscuits, bully-beef, and 
jam, and when we reached our hut we had a 
pretty good meal. The boys had none too much 
for themselves and it meant a great deal to give 
up any of their precious food; but they knew, 



126 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

from experience, that we were starving, and we 
thought we were, for after good army rations, 
one small slice of black bread does not go far 
towards satisfying hunger. But, after existing 
on German fare for two months, we knew what 
it was to be really hungry, we were more like 
famished wolves than human beings. 

This is a day's ration, served out to us the 
first day in camp, and in the two months I was 
there it never varied: for breakfast, a small 
bowl of coifee made from dried acorns, and 
served without milk or sugar. It was so bitter 
as to be almost undrinkable, and there was not 
one morsel of food given with it. For dinner 
we were allowed a bowl of stuff they called soup. 
It was made by boiling cabbage and turnips with 
a few dog bones; when I went there first I 
wouldn't believe the boys when they told me 
that our soup was made of dog bones, but one 
day I met one of the French prisoners who had 
been a doctor, and we went for a walk around 
the grounds, so I asked him what kind of an 
animal went into our soup and he told me it was 
just ordinary dog. We argued the question for 
several minutes, and T was still unconvinced, so 
he said, '*Go into the cook house and see for 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 127 

yourself." I went, and the cook (who was a 
French prisoner) very obligingly lifted out 
some bones with his long spoon and showed me 
one of Fido's legs. That settled the question, 
and, naturally, I enjoyed the soup more than 
ever. As an extra treat, to give it a special 
flavour, sometimes they threw in the bark. The 
boys had taken their own. way of finding out 
what they were eating — they saved all the bones 
for several days and then they put them to- 
gether — the result was a German Dachshund. 
We had nothing but this soup for dinner, and 
for supper we were given a bowl of slop which 
the boys called "sand-storm," and a three- 
pound loaf of Deutschland black bread to be 
divided among ten of us. This bread was made 
from ground vegetables mixed with rye flour. 
If you read Gerard's ''Four Years in Ger- 
many" you will see that samples of this food 
were examined by a specialist and declared to 
be almost devoid of food value. It was planned 
to reduce our numbers by a process of slow 
starvation. 

We used to fight over the garbage cans for the 
peelings of potatoes, and cabbage, and when the 
old prisoners, who were getting their Ked Cross 



128 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

boxes, brought us their German issue of soup, 
it was not safe for them to come inside our 
enclosure. They would place the can inside the 
gate and we fought over it like a pack of hungry 
wolves. If you think we are exaggerating, see 
Gerard's new picture film "My Four Years in 
Germany." It tells better than I can just how 
bad things were. Well, one day when our soup 
was handed in by the other prisoners a funny 
thing happened; we had seen the boys coming 
and had made a rush to the huts to get our 
bowls — a very short fellow reached the soup can 
first and before he could get his bowl filled, we 
had all crowded in on top of him — poor Shorty 
had his head and arm in the soup and was 
almost drowned before we got him out. He 
had soup everywhere except in the bowl. Every 
British prisoner had to put up mth this kind 
of food for the first two months ; after that, the 
Red Cross parcels would begin to arrive. The 
condition of the Eussian prisoners was indeed 
pitiable. They received no help from home, and 
were depending solely on German food. A Eus- 
sian can live on much less than a Britisher, but 
they literally starved to death on what the Ger- 
mans gave them. They were made to work, and 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 129 

when they could go no longer and fell down 
from sheer weakness the Guard would beat them 
till they died. I have seen this happen again 
and again, and there was an average of fifteen 
deaths every day among the Russians alone. 
Our parcels came just in time to save the 
strongest of us, but scores of the weaker ones 
died. But just here let me explain the system 
used by the Red Cross for getting food to the 
boys in the prison camps. As soon as a new 
prisoner reaches the camp he is given a card 
which he fills in and sends to the Red Cross 
Headquarters in London. This card contains 
his name and number, and the number of the 
camp that he is in. It takes about two months 
to get the first parcel through; after that he 
received six food parcels and two of tobacco 
each month, and once in six months they send 
him a complete outfit of clothes, from overcoat 
to boots, also a parcel of toilet articles, such 
as toothbrush, shaving outfit, soap, etc. From 
the time these parcels reach the Dutch border, 
they are handled by a staff of our own pris- 
oners, so there is no danger of their going 
astray. The Germans examine the parcels be- 
fore they are given out to make sure that they 



130 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

do not contain maps or compasses for the pris- 
oners ; that is the only time they handle them. 

These parcels mean life and a small degree of 
comfort to the boys, so you can imagine how 
they are looked forward to. The Eed Cross 
saved my life and the lives of thousands of our 
boys; and they deserve honour and support 
from every person who calls himself a loyal 
citizen of any Allied country. I shall never 
forget when my first parcel came ; I had been in 
camp two months and I had failed eighteen 
pounds. One of the boys came into my hut and 
told me there were two parcels for me, I told 
him to stop fooling, that his joke was stale. 
But he said, ''No, it's straight goods this time, 
here are the tickets" — so I rushed off to where 
the parcel office was and got in line. Pretty 
soon my turn came and I handed in my tickets. 
A big German brought out the parcels, and 
while he was censoring them I was figuring on 
what I was going to have to eat, but imagine 
my disappointment when he pushed over the 
parcels and I found they contained nothing but 
clothing. There were two suits of underwear, 
two pairs of socks, two shirts and one pair of 
blankets, but no food. My clothing was in rags 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 131 

when I reached Germany, my tunic and cap 
were lost in the sap the day I was taken, and I 
needed socks and underwear very badly, also 
boots, so this supply was more than welcome, 
but I needed food more than anything else. I 
put all the stuff into the blankets and started 
back for the hut. When the boys saw me com- 
ing, they rushed out to meet me, for they were 
building on a feed, the same as myself. The 
unwritten rule of the prison camp is, whatever 
one gets the rest all share it, so they were dis- 
appointed too. However, three days later our 
food parcels arrived, having been delayed at the 
border, and we sure had a big feed. My first 
food parcel contained one tin of Welsh rarebit, 
one tin of jam, a large package of biscuits, three 
bars of chocolate, and two packages of ciga- 
rettes. I tell you it put new life into us, and 
we felt like licking all the Huns in sight. 

After our Eed Cross parcels came we were 
able to shave ourselves, and we had soap to 
wash with. When we first came to the camp the 
Germans asked if there were any barbers in our 
bunch. Now, there wasn't, but one of the boys, 
"Slim" Evans, volunteered for the job. They 
gave him an old razor, some soap and a strop, 



132 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

also a small brush, and lie was ready for work. 
He had no chair of any kind, so he looked 
around till he found a bench in one of the huts ; 
he swiped this and turned it upside down on his 
table. When the boys came for a shave, they 
climbed up on the table and sat in the upturned 
bench, using the leg of the bench for a head rest. 
It sure was some ''barber's chair"; I'll bet 
there never was another like it. Well, Slim got 
lots of customers; the Germans didn't pay him 
for his work, but the prisoners tried to. Some 
had nothing at all, but he did their work just the 
same; others were working on farms, and for 
this they were given what was equal to 2d or 4id 
in English money. Slim never took anything 
from those who only received 2d, but those get- 
ting 4id were allowed to pay. Sometimes they 
gave him a box of German cigarettes so strong 
that if you smoked one on Monday you could 
taste it on Saturday. I remember my first visit 
to Slim; I climbed up into the chair and Slim 
asked me what I was getting; I said 4c?, so he 
gave the razor an extra rub-up. Now, I hadn't 
had a shave for a month, so I was a pretty 
hairy-looking customer. Slim said, "How long 
since you 've had a wash ? " I said, ' ' This morn- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 133 

ing, only I hadn't any soap." He said, "Never 
mind, I'll wash you with shaving soap." So 
he went to work, and really I didn't know 
whether he was shaving or skinning me. As a 
matter of fact he did a little of both, for he had 
six patches of skin off when he finished and the 
only remark he made was, ''This razor is not 
quite as sharp as I could wish," but he told me 
to be sure and come again. 

But I have spoken mostly of food, or rather 
the lack of it. Now I will try and give you an 
idea of how we put in our time. They didn't 
work us very hard in this camp ; usually we were 
only taken out three times a week. When they 
wanted us, German guards would come in, line 
up about twenty of us, and take us out to work 
in the fields. The first job they put us at was 
planting potatoes and we worked faithfully the 
first day, but when we came in that night I said 
to ' ' Snipe, ' ' the new pal I had made, ' ' By golly ! 
Snipe, I don't like the idea of producing food 
for these 'square-heads,' let's see if we can't 
put one over them." "All right," said Snipe, 
"I'm game, but how in hell are you going to do 
it?" I said, "Well, how would this do? Next 
time we are sent out, I'll take the hoe and you 



134 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

the bucket of potatoes ; as soon as we get a little 
piece away from the guard, I'll keep on making 
holes, but you just go through the motions of 
dropping in potatoes, then when we reach the 
centre of the field I'll make an extra large hole 
and you can dump in all the potatoes except a 
few that must be saved for the other end of the 
row." *'Gee, that sounds all right," said 
Snipe; ''we'll have a try at it anyway, and I 
believe it will work." The field we had been 
working in was a long narrow strip containing 
about five acres, and there was an armed guard 
stationed at each end. Well, next day we were 
called out again and we tried our new plan. It 
worked splendidly; the other boys saw what we 
were doing and they all did the same, so the 
whole field was planted that way, and I wish 
you could have seen those potatoes when they 
came up. 

The next thing we were given to do was put- 
ting out cabbage plants (of course they had not 
yet discovered the trick we had played with the 
potatoes). In planting cabbages the first man 
was given a small sharp stick instead of a hoe, 
and man number two had a box of young plants. 
A hole was made, but before the plant was put 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 135 

in the roots were nipped off. In three days the 
cabbages were all wilted or dead and the Ger- 
mans could not make out what was wrong, so 
they sprinkled the ground with some kind of 
stuff thinking the damage was caused by worms 
in the soil. But some one happened to pull up 
a plant, and they realized then what had been 
done. Of course they were very angry, but no 
one would tell who did it, and they couldn't very 
well punish the whole camp. However, they 
didn't give us any more farm work to do. 

Shortly after this, I was out on a working 
party with some of the old prisoners and one of 
them began telling me about a man who had 
made an escape from the camp some months 
before. He had gotten as far as the Holland 
border, but was caught there. The word 
''escape" thrilled me as nothing else ever had, 
and from that time on the idea was never out of 
my head. I questioned the man and got all he 
knew about the distance to the border, direction, 
etc., and I could hardly wait till night to get 
telling the other boys about it. Finally we got 
back to the bunkhouse and I told Snipe and two 
or three other Canadians what I had heard. 
They were just as excited as I was, and we 



136 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

decided that if that fellow could get out of the 
camp, why we could too, and we made up our 
minds to keep working on it till we did find a 
way out. 

One night when we were discussing the ques- 
tion. Snipe suggested that we cut a hole through 
the floor of the hut and tunnel our way out. 
"We could make the hole under one of the bunks 
so it would not be easily seen by the guards. 
The plan seemed good to us and we began im- 
mediately to put it into operation. Snipe hap- 
pened to be occupying one of the lower bunks, 
so we started there to cut the hole in the floor — 
we had only a couple of old jack-knives to work 
with — but after we got through the floor, we did 
the digging with our hands. While two of us 
worked the other lay on the top bunk where we 
had a small window, and kept watch. The floor 
of the shack in which we lived was two and a 
half feet from the ground, so there was plenty 
of room for the earth that we took out of the 
tunnel. We worked away for eight nights and 
by that time we had passed the inner fence, the 
guard and the electric wires, so we thought it 
was safe to come to the surface. When we got 
within a foot of the top we decided it was too 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 137 

late to attempt to get away that night, so 
planned to start at 11.30 the following night 
and that would give us time to get quite a dis- 
tance away from the camp before daylight. So 
we went back to our bunks, and all that night we 
lay planning and dreaming of what we would 
do when we got out. 

Next morning I was too excited to sleep, so 
very early I got up and took a walk around the 
fence. When I reached the place I thought 
our tunnel should be I took a look in that direc- 
tion, and to my horror, I discovered a big hole 
between the two fences. I knew in an instant 
what had happened; when the Germans were 
changing guards, their weight had broken 
through the tunnel — I smile now as I think of 
the surprise it must have given them, but at the 
time it was a bitter disappointment. I hustled 
back to tell the boys, and Snipe moved into 
another bunk so that they couldn't fasten the 
blame on him. Of course we knew that the 
tunnel would be traced to our hut, and sure 
enough in about half an hour a bunch of guards 
came in, lined us up, and tried to make us tell 
what ones had attempted to escape. We all 
denied it, so after making a thorough search 



138 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

of the hut for maps and compasses they let us 
go. Thus ended my first attempt at escape. 

Shortly after this the guard came in one 
morning, lined up about fifty of us, and said 
they were taking us away to work on farms. 
We were taken to the railway station, loaded on 
trains, and taken farther into Germany. When 
the train stopped and we got out, we found that 
we were in the centre of a coal mine district. 
With their usual regard for the truth they had 
taken us to work in the coal mines instead of on 
farms, and this mine where we were was well 
known among the prisoners of war as the 
"Black Hole of Germany" and it has main- 
tained its evil reputation up to the present time. 

The other camp we were in was a paradise in 
comparison with this. Owing to the fact that 
the '.rain came up to the mines, there were no 
wire fences except just in the centre where 
the prisoners' huts were located. But there 
seemed to be guards everywhere. The first 
thing that struck us was the dirt of everything, 
the smoke of the coke ovens covered the whole 
place with a layer of soot. 

It was five o'clock in the evening when we 
arrived, and we were this time turned loose 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 139 

with the other prisoners ; there must have been 
five hundred at this camp — Russian, French, 
and English. We were the first Canadians to go 
there. 

We found the barracks and every other place 
in a filthy condition, the beds \vere dirty and 
crawling with the largest fleas I have ever seen ; 
these fleas are as large as ordinary mosquitos, 
they breed in the mine and are carried up on the 
men's clothes. Often these pests were so bad 
that the men lay out in the yard at night instead 
of going to bed — anyway, in the hot weather the 
stench from the beds is almost unbearable. 

We walked out among the prisoners, and they 
were glad to get news of the war and of the 
outside world. Among other questions, they 
asked if London was still standing. The Ger- 
mans had told them it had been levelled to the 
ground. Some of the men had been in the mines 
for two years and the stories they told were 
almost incredible. The Germans who guard this 
camp are always savage and cruel and they are 
urged on by the owners and operators of the 
mine. We talked with some of the first British 
prisoners who arrived there, and this is what 
they told us: At first they refused to work, 



140 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

knowing that it was contrary to international 
law to force prisoners of war to work in the 
mines. For refusing to work they were given 
a week of the most brutal abuse and torture 
possible. The weather was bitterly cold and 
there was a foot of snow. These men were 
stripped of everything but their shirt and pants 
and made to stand "at attention" out of doors. 
Any man moving hand or foot was knocked 
down with the butt of a rifle, and those who 
fainted from cold and exhaustion were dragged 
away and put back in their places as soon as 
they became conscious — while those whose 
strength enabled them to hold out the longest 
were stood in front of the cokery ovens until 
they were utterly exhausted by the terrific heat, 
and had to consent to work. The first shift that 
went down into the mines were driven into the 
cage with rifle butts and bayonets, and some of 
them went down unconscious. Oh, when this 
war is over, there will be a long day of reckon- 
ing with the German people. 

After listening to such stories as these, and 
after seeing the poor wrecked bodies of the pris- 
oners, you can imagine how we felt as we were 
marched off to work the next morning. When 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 141 

we were taken out, we were given our first suit 
of prison clothes — this consisted of overalls and 
smock and cap. The overalls had a four-inch 
stripe of red down each leg, the jacket had six 
inches of red down the centre of the back, and 
the cap had a wide red band across the top. 
After we got into these, we looked like a bunch 
of robins. 

When we reached the pit-head we found a line 
of German civilians waiting to go down into 
the mines — as we waited for the cages to come 
up we overheard some of their conversation — of 
course we could not understand it, but one of the 
old prisoners translated it for me. The Ger- 
mans had noticed that we were new men and 
they asked the guard what nationality we were. 
The guard told them we were Canadians, but 
the civilians said, ^'Oh nix! the Canadians are 
'Swas' " — meaning black. They argued with 
the guard for fifteen minutes and then were not 
convinced. Finally the cage came, we were 
loaded in, and it started down. I shall never 
forget the feeling I had; I thought that we 
would never strike bottom. I asked an old pris- 
oner how deep the mine was, and he said two 
thousand feet, and I believed him. 



142 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

Well, at last the cage reached the bottom and 
I had my first view of a coal mine ; even to my 
inexperienced eye things seemed to be in very 
bad shape. Owing to the great demand for coal, 
they did not take time to properly timber their 
mine, and the tunnels were caving in all the 
time — I am safe in saying that there was an 
average of three men killed there every week. 
There was never an inquiry made into these 
deaths. 

Well, they started me to work and my job was 
to load up cars with the coal that the civilians 
hacked out. These cars held just a ton, and I 
had to push the loaded car onto the main tunnel 
or road; an engine took it the rest of the way. 
This was very heavy work, and often I thought 
my back would surely break, and it hurt me 
to think that the Germans were getting so much 
out of me. However, as the days went on we 
found little ways of getting back at them. For 
instance, the civilians were paid according to 
the number of tons they got out, and each man 
had tags with his number on them. When a car 
was loaded we were supposed to put one of these 
tags on the top, and when it reached the top 
of the shaft it was credited to the man whose 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 143 

number was on it. Well, sometimes, instead of^ 
putting the tag on the top of the load, we put 
it inside and piled the coal on it. At the top of 
the shaft, when no tag was found, the car was 
not credited to any one, and when pay day came 
and those old Germans found the paymaster did 
not give them credit for all the coal taken out, 
there surely was some fun; it did our hearts 
good to hear the row they made. Of course we 
would not have been able to play any tricks if 
there had been any g-uards around, but once we 
were down in the mine we were out from under 
military rule and working under the mine man- 
agement, but the latter were just as cruel in 
their way as the military; they not only got 
every ounce of work possible out of each pris- 
oner, but they inflicted the most terrible punish- 
ment for every slight offence. A few days after 
I went there, a splendid young Canadian boy 
from Toronto was found dead with the back of 
his head smashed in. He had been on night 
shift, and he had not been hurt in a cave-in, for 
our own boys found him. We asked for an in- 
vestigation, but we were told to go to work and 
mind our o^vn business ; so we Canadians went 
on strike. A German who spoke a little English 



144 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

asked us what was the matter, and we said we 
wanted to find out what had killed our comrade. 
He laughed in our faces and said, ''You are 
prisoners, you must do as you are told." We 
told him where he could go, and against the ad- 
vice of all the old prisoners refused to go to 
work, and this was our punishment; we were 
stood ''at attention" in fifteen-minute periods, 
with five minutes "at ease," until ready to go 
back to work. This was indeed torture — the five 
minutes' rest made it possible to prolong the 
agony. Men faint if made to stand "at atten- 
tion" for many hours, but doing it this way we 
never lost consciousness. Guards marched up 
and down behind us ; if we moved hand or foot 
we were knocked down and kicked ; though they 
kicked us on the ankles whether we moved or 
not — ^my right ankle was so swollen I was not 
able to do up my boot for three weeks. Well, 
we stood this without food for two days and 
nights, and then we were so exhausted that we 
had to give in. The old prisoners had all been 
through this kind of thing, that was why they 
warned us not to go on strike. But no matter 
what the punishment was, we could not let the 
murder of one of our number go unnoticed. 



INTO THE JAWS OP DEATH 145 

Shortly after this we had another lesson of the 
same kind. An Englishman on night shift was 
found sleeping and the foreman who found him 
knocked him down a shaft and killed him. An- 
other Britisher, who saw the murder, reported 
the foreman, and accused him of the murder, but 
when the trial came off the Britisher was given 
six months in prison for perjury. i 

But to go back to our work. We were sup- 
posed to be on eight-hour shifts — only some- 
times they would make us do a double shift, 
or sixteen hours. When this was required they 
gave us an extra bread ration. The German in 
charge of the camp thought himself very smart 
because he could speak a few words of English 
and also write a little ; so, instead of telling us 
that we were to come to his office for an extra 
ration of bread, he wrote the order on a piece 
of cardboard and hung it in our barracks. See- 
ing him hanging something up we all gathered 
round, and this is what we read : ' ' You English- 
men, before going on shift, will draw your 
Breath at my office." Of course we all shouted 
and laughed at this ; and the officer stood there 
looking as though he had been kicked and didn't 
know who had done it. He tumbled that there 



146 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

was sometliing- wrong with the notice, but all he 
said was ''You Englander, Schweinhunds," and 
went out. 

It was while we were working on one of these 
long shifts that we thought of another way of 
getting even with our slave-drivers, for this is 
really what they were. They worked us to the 
last ounce of our strength; the food given us 
was not sufficient to keep body and soul to- 
gether. We were living on our Red Cross par- 
cels, and we ate none of the German food except 
the bread. It's the only time I ever worked for 
nothing and boarded myself. We were pun- 
ished for every oifence, real and imaginary, and 
when a man is driven harder than he can bear, 
and refuses to work any more, the methods used 
to force him to work would put any slave-driver 
to shame ; and we were ready to do anything to 
try and even up the score. This is one plan that 
worked well. 

There was a great deal of rock among the 
coal, and we were supposed to have two cars 
always on hand, and fill one with rock and the 
other with coal; but we thought as nature had 
mixed them in the mine that they should go up 
the same way, so we would half fill a car with 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 147 

stones, and then cover it over with. coal. When 
this car reached the top it looked all right, so 
it was put into the dumping machine ; once there 
it could not be stopped, and when those big 
rocks went rolling down into the machinery and 
over the sieves, there was one hell of a smash- 
up. Those old Germans would tear their hair 
with rage, but of course they couldn't tell who 
had done it. Finally, like everything else that 
went wrong, it was blamed on the "Eng- 
landers," as we were called, and the old Ger- 
man who spoke English took the case in hand. 
One night, after coming off shift, he lined us up 
and said, "I have been notified that you Eng- 
landers are putting stones in between the coal, 
and if I hear any more of this you shall be 
punished severely.'' Some one started to laugh 
and we all took it up, so he stood us *'at atten- 
tion. ' ' No matter what w^as done to us we never 
gave them the satisfaction of letting them know 
it hurt. I have seen our boys die under slow 
torture, and always they had that grin on their 
faces. 

This was one thing the Germans never could 
understand, for, as a nation, they have no spirit 
at all ; I have seen big men blubber like children 



148 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

over the slightest hurt. Working with civilians, 
we often had the satisfaction of a scrap. We 
dared not touch one of the military, no matter 
what they said or did, for it would mean instant 
death ; but when the civilians were extra-brutal 
or insulting, as they often were, we got even if 
we did not happen to be too greatly out- 
numbered. The smallest Britisher that ever 
went into the mine could lick the biggest Hun 
in a fair tight. But that was just the trouble 
— the Germans know nothing about the first 
principles of fair play. At school, instead of 
being taught to defend themselves with their 
fists, they fight with sticks or anything they can 
lay their hands on, and once they get their op- 
ponent down, they kick him until he gives in. 
So when they ran up against English-speaking 
people and there was a scrap in sight, they were 
astounded to see the Englander lay down the 
shovel or whatever he happened to have in his 
hands. They would stand and stare with their 
weapon half raised as they saw their opponent 
laying aside his only means of defence. They 
did not know what to expect, and while they 
were in this uncertain condition the Englander 
got in his first blow. We became quite notori- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 149 

ous for our methods of fighting, and when we 
would be put to work with any new men, their 
first question would be, ''What did you do be- 
fore joining the Army!" and we always said, 
' ' We were boxers. ' ' They would smile and say, 
"Ich nix boxer — nice Englander, good Eng- 
lander" — this amused us immensely and their 
fear of us made them use us more decently. 

After I had been in the mine about six 
months, Snipe and I planned out a scheme by 
which we hoped to escape doing any work for 
awhile. In going through the mine, we had 
come across many abandoned tunnels from 
which the coal had been taken — in many cases 
these tunnels were partially caved in and were 
considered unsafe, and for this reason they 
were avoided by the miners. The idea came to 
us this way ; — one night when Snipe and I were 
coming off work, we passed these tunnels, and I 
said to Snipe, "Say, old boy, I'm fed up with 
this everlasting work for these brutal Huns; 
let's think up some scheme for getting out of it 
for awhile." Snipe said, "All right. But how 
can we get away from these blamed 'square- 
heads ' ? " Just then we noticed one of the tun- 
nels, and I said, "HuUy gee! Snipe, what's the 



150 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

matter with hiding in one of these tunnels ? No 
one ever comes here." ''Golly! I believe it 
would work," says Snipe, pounding me on the 
back. We were very much excited, and when we 
reached our bunkhouse we told some of the 
other boys. They asked to come in too, so six 
of us laid our plans. We went down on shift 
as usual and followed the other miners till we 
came to the tunnel in which we had planned to 
hide. When there was no one looking, we would 
dodge in, and when we were missed the miners 
thought we had gone to work in another part of 
the mine ; each mine boss thought we were taken 
to work for some one else, so no one hunted us 
up; of course we were in constant danger of 
being buried alive, but we gladly took the risk 
for the sake of getting a rest. 

We would lie round chatting and sleeping all 
day, and at night, blacken our faces and join 
the other miners on their way to the main shaft. 
We worked this game for eight weeks, not 
always staying in the same hole, but changing 
around whenever we saw a likely looking place. 
We had a splendid rest, and it put us in better 
condition for what was to follow. A funny 
thing happened after this had been going on a 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 151 

few weeks. One morning two of our boys, 
Barney and Eaeside, did not come down in the 
same cage with us, and as we didn't dare wait, 
for fear of being set to work, we were out of 
sight before they arrived. So they hunted up 
a place for themselves, and the spot they chose 
was between the timbers and the roof of the 
main tunnel. It was a good place, and they 
would never have been discovered if they 
hadn't gone to sleep and snored. But they 
did, and a fire boss happened to be passing at 
the time, so he located their hiding-place. Of 
course he couldn't see who was there, but he 
tried to poke them out with his stick. They 
soon woke up, but Barney whispered, ''To hell 
with him, Mac, we won't go," so they lay still. 
Finally the fire boss went for help, and as soon 
as he left the boys came out. But they had to 
come out one at a time. Barney got down first ; 
and he beat it to locate another hole. When 
Eaeside struck the tunnel, he saw a light not far 
away, and he thought it must be the returning 
boss, so off he went in the opposite direction. 
Barney had the light, and was looking for a 
place large enough to hold them, when he heard 
Eaeside running. He at once jumped to the 



152 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

conclusion that Raeside had spotted a ''square- 
head" — and he started off to his assistance — 
Raeside heard some one coming on the run, and 
he thought it must be the boss, so he went still 
faster. They chased each other like this for 
about a mile. Then Eaeside gave out : and hid- 
ing his lamp, he hid in the first hole he came to. 
In a moment along came Barney, puffing and 
blowing like a whale, and as he passed Eaeside 
saw who it was. Then the joke of it struck him,, 
he called Barney back, and the two of them sat 
down in the tunnel and laughed till they were 
sore. The boss never found them, and I can 
imagine how angry he was when he went back 
with his reinforcements and found his prey 
gone. That night the boys told us the joke they 
had played on themselves. 

But our good time ended abruptly one Satur- 
day when a mine inspector, or ''fire-stager" as 
he is called, came around on his tour of inspec- 
tion, and he found us hiding in a hole about 
three hundred yards from the main road. We 
put out our pit lamps when we saw him passing, 
and he didn't let on having seen us, so we 
couldn't tell whether he had or not. He was 
too big a coward to tackle us alone, and we 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 153 

knew that if lie had discovered us he would go 
for help. We didn't know whether to run or 
risk staying where we were, and while we were 
talking about it, we heard the tramping of a lot 
of feet in the tunnel leading to our hiding-place. 
It was too late to go now, we would have to face 
the music. There were six of us, and Snipe 
suggested that if no more than ten came we 
would stand and fight, but if there were more 
we had best make a running fight and escape to 
some other part of the mine. AVe decided to do 
this, and while we were waiting for them to 
come in we filled our pockets with stones. 

But the foreman had no intention of bringing 
his men in — he lined them up, ten on a side, 
opposite the hole through which we must come 
out — they were armed with sticks, pieces of 
heavy rubber hose, and anything they could lay 
their hands on. xA^fter lining them up he made 
them hide their lamps under the jackets so that 
we wouldn't be able to see them when we came 
out. Then, when he got them fixed to his liking, 
he very bravely marched in where we were and 
said,''AlleEngiander?" We said, ''Yes." He 
said, ' ' You Schweinhunds ! " At that one of our 
boys jumped and made a pass at him, crying, 



154, INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

*'You big square-headed German, I'll knock 
your head off, I wouldn't take that from your 
Kaiser Bill." The German backed up and 
avoided the blow, saying tauntingly, ''Ah, nix, 
Engliinder." Then he asked us why we were 
not working, and we said w^e had got tired and 
were taking a rest. He said ' ' Komm ' mit. ' ' "We 
said, ' ' Oh no. ' ' When he saw we had no inten- 
tion of going he began to make promises. He 
said that if we would only go back to work he 
would not report us and we would not be pun- 
ished in any way. 

We did not believe him, and we trusted his 
promises about as long as it took him to make 
them; but, as Snipe said, we might as well take 
a chance on it, for we had to get out, and there 
was only one road to go. Of course he couldn't 
understand us, but we had picked up enough 
German to make out everything he said. Well, 
we pretended to believe him and we started out, 
walking in couples. When the first two reached 
the main road two lights flashed out, and the 
clubs commenced to whistle through the air. 
The boys shouted ' ' duck ! ' ' — and, believe me, we 
did. We started down between those two lines 
of Germans, and seeing there were so many we 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 155 

thought it best just to make a run for it. In 
going through, three of our boys got knocked 
down, and the rest of us got some bad whacks 
over the head and back but we kept our feet. 
The last two Germans on the line got scared 
when they heard ns coming and started to run. 
They were on the road just ahead of us, and we 
made a dash after them. They were a consider- 
able distance from the main body when we over- 
took them, and I remember one of the boys say- 
ing, ''We'll make these square-headed devils 
pay for what we've received" — and believe me, 
we did. Instead of going home to their supper 
that night, I '11 bet they went to the doctor. 

Well, when this scrap was all over and we got 
to the top of the shaft, the mine inspector that 
had caught us reported us to the military 
authorities, and their punishment was five 
hours "at attention." When we had put 
this in, they allowed us to go to our bunks. The 
next day was Sunday, and we were peacefully 
sleeping when a big German came in and called 
out our numbers. We asked him what he 
wanted, and he said we had to go on the Coke- 
o-roy. We certainly knew what this meant. 

The coke ovens were attached to the mine, and 



156 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

most of the coal taken out was made into coke. 
Work on the ovens was so hard and so trying on 
account of the great heat, that they used this as 
a punishment for anything that was done wrong 
in the mines. This is what the German who 
could speak English told us. The morning we 
were put on, he lined us up and read this to us, 
**If you Englanders does not do your work right 
beneath the mine, we put you on coke ovens, and 
there, if you shall not work, you shall die." 
We all laughed at this, and he said, ''You Eng- 
land Schweinhunds ! " and went away. 

But it was sure a punishment. The regular 
hours through the week was a twelve-hour shift, 
and each man was obliged to shovel thirty-two 
tons of coke, wheel it from ten to twenty yards 
along the platform, and dump it into railway 
cars. On Sunday the shift was twenty-four 
hours long, and each one had to handle sixty- 
four tons of coke. If you were not through 
when your time was up, you must keep at it till 
you did the required number of tons and then 
start back to work again with your shift. 

It was on the twenty-four-hour shift that we 
started our work. We went on at 7 a.m. on 
Sunday, and we worked from that until 7 Mon- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 157 

day morning. Almost as soon as I went on the 
ovens I met two of my old pals, Nickelson and 
Macdonald. They had been put here for at- 
tempting to escape from the mine, and had been 
at this job for a week before we arrived. We 
were mighty glad to see each other, for we all 
belonged to the same ' ' school. ' ' But a ' ' school ' ' 
in a German prison camp does not mean the 
same as it does in America. We got the idea 
from the British Tommy, only he calls it ''muck- 
ing it. " It is made up of a bunch of boys who 
put all their parcels in together and go fifty- 
fifty on everything. Sharing with each other 
brought us a little closer together than we other- 
wise would have been. 

Well, these were in our little ''school" and 
had also shared in our rest-cure up to the time 
of their attempted escape. So when they saw us 
come on the ovens, they knew exactly what had 
happened. As I passed Nick, he said, "Which 
would you rather do, Jack, work on the coke 
oven or go to church?" I laughed and said, 
"Well, I guess the church has it this time." 
After awhile I happened to be beside Mac, and I 
said, ' ' Speaking of baseball, Mac, do they serve 
afternoon tea here?" He said, "Well, they 



158 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

used to, but you know tea has gone up, and as 
a substitute they serve out a little hell." And 
believe me, I hadn't been there long before I 
found that this was literally true. 

I was feeling fairly fit after my two months ' 
rest; and this rest was all that saved my life. 
But during that first day I didn't mind the work 
so much, I could stand it anyway, but when 
night came it was awful beyond description. 
The heat of the closed ovens was bad enough, 
but at night, when the coke in the ovens was 
sufficiently baked, they opened the huge doors 
and the burning mass was pushed out by 
machinery. It came out a solid lump just the 
shape of the oven, and the heat it threw oif was 
terrific. Two or three big "square-heads" 
stood near with iron forks fourteen feet long, 
and with these they prodded the mass until it 
broke into pieces. When it first broke it burst 
into flames, but gradually it cooled, and finally 
they finished it by turning the water hose on it. 
But the Germans who attended to this looked 
like skeletons — the gas and heat seemed to have 
eaten the flesh from their bones and they seemed 
scarcely human. I was working near and the 
fumes of gas and the awful heat was almost 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 159 

more than a human being could stand. I looked 
around at the prisoners ; and such a sight — they 
were toiling like galley slaves, their faces were 
streaked with soot and sweat till you couldn't 
tell whether they were black or white. I '11 never 
forget the horror of that first night on the 
ovens, I was almost dead long before I had 
finished shovelling my sixty-four tons of coke, 
but the awfulness of the scene was harder to 
bear than the pain of my body. I said to Mac, 
"What does this remind you of, Mac!" He 
said, "Jack, it's more like hell than anything 
that was ever imagined or painted." 

We were almost insensible when at last our 
work was finished; but we had to keep at it as 
long as our brains were strong enough to force 
our bodies to move. I saw what the weaker 
ones got, and that was enough for me. Those 
inhuman devils with their boasted German cul- 
ture — a disgrace to everything that God has 
created — would drag these poor quivering, 
fainting creatures, pleading for mercy — right 
up to those red-hot ovens, and at the point of a 
bayonet force them to stand in that withering 
heat till they fell unconscious. Then the guard 
would drag them away and make two of the 



160 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

other prisoners carry them back to the barracks. 

What I have described is a sample of what my 
days and nights were like on the coke ovens, till 
I made my final escape two months later. I 
played out several times, and each time I was 
roasted alive before the ovens. Once I backed 
away to escape the heat, and the guard knocked 
me unconscious with his rifle. The strongest 
men are being crippled and broken down in 
health in this work (of course the weak ones die 
very soon), but the treatment accorded our pris- 
oners in other places is not much better. A 
young lad belonging to the Gordon Highlanders 
told me that he was wounded when he was 
taken prisoner, and he lay in the hospital for 
three days before they even looked at his leg. 
Then, when he finally got attention, everything 
was done in the roughest kind of way, and when 
the nurse had finished the dressing she spit in 
his face. 

Another man who belonged to the Irish Fusi- 
liers told me that when he was captured they 
kept him four days in the front lines doing 
fatigue duty under our shell fire, and in that 
time he had scarcely anything to eat. On the 
fourth night he and three other prisoners were 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 161 

quartered in a small room of a Belgian house, 
and they were taken down and lined up against 
the wall, while the German officers amused them- 
selves by pelting them with green apples. One 
of the prisoners attempted to eat one of the 
apples and was beaten almost to death. 

What we endured was the special torture that 
was reserved for Camp K 47 ; they had different 
methods at other camps. I remember an old 
prisoner telling me of the torture they had 
where he was before coming to the mines. It 
was an ammunition factory, and they had taken 
a bunch of English prisoners there and tried to 
make them work. Now, this is where our men 
drew the line, and though they knew it would 
mean punishment, and perhaps death, they abso- 
lutely refused to go to work. Of course the 
German officials were raging, and they resorted 
to their special line of torture to compel obedi- 
ence. The boys were taken to where boxes were 
placed against large trees, they were forced to 
mount these and extend their arms full length 
about their heads. Then their wrists were 
strapped together and fastened to the tree — the 
box was kicked away and they hung by their 
arms often for hours. Every little while an 



162 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

officer would go around and ask them if they 
were ready to go to work. On their refusing he 
would give them a few kicks and pass on. This 
was kept up as long as the men could stand the 
agony, and the prisoner Avho told me this showed 
me the marks on his wrists, and said he knew at 
least six of their boys who died as a result of 
this torture. 

The only thing that kept them from killing 
the prisoners outright was the fact that all the 
German prison camps were visited every few 
weeks by American Ambassador Gerard or 
some of his staff. He passed around among the 
boys, asked questions, and received complaints, 
and it is undoubtedlj^ true that Ambassador 
Gerard saved hundreds of lives in the prison 
camps, 

I had been working on the ovens for some- 
thing like a month when a fresh bunch of pris- 
oners were brought up from the mine. They 
had followed our example and were caught tak- 
ing a rest. "With this group was a young Cana- 
dian called Toby, and he was certainly "some 
boy. ' ' He was only eighteen at the time, really 
just a kid, but he had spirit enough for two 
ordinary men. They put liim shovelling coke, 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 163 

and he got along all right till he finished the 
dump he was working on. Then, after the large 
chunks were gone, the dust and cleanings should 
have been put into wheelbarrows and taken over 
to a crusher. Toby had not been told this, and 
naturally he loaded it all into the cars. The 
boss caught him at it, and he stormed and shook 
his ugly fist in Toby's face. But Toby had 
learned to take a good deal, so he paid no atten- 
tion. But the German manager had seen him 
too, so he came up when the boss had finished, 
and of course he could afford to be more insult- 
ing than his inferior. So after ranting for sev- 
eral minutes and wiggling his finger under 
Toby's nose he finished up by giving the lad a 
couple of brutal kicks with his iron-shod boots. 
This was more than Toby's spirit could stand, 
and Toby wheeled around and landed him a blow 
on the jaw; the man staggered back, and before 
he could recover Toby gave him another that 
sent him sprawling. The platform boss saw it 
all, and drawing his revolver he threatened to 
shoot, but Toby defied him and dared him to go 
ahead. The bully w^as afraid to do it, and he 
contented himself with reporting the case to the 
guard. Of course the guard came up, and w^ith 



164 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

a great show of force dragged the youngster to 
the coke ovens and made him stand *'at atten- 
tion." But he hadn't been there long when 
lunch time came, and as they dared not leave 
him alone Toby was marched off to the plat- 
form with the other prisoners. During lunch he 
told me about the scrap he had gotten into, and 
I warned him to be on his guard — I knew the 
kind of brutes he was up against and I felt sure 
that they would try to get even if they could get 
him at a disadvantage. We were drinking pop 
at the time, and I made him hide the empty 
bottle under his jacket to use as a weapon in 
case he was attacked. Well, we went on duty 
again and Toby was put before the ovens to 
finish his punishment, but he had only been 
there a few minutes when the boss came along 
with a shovel on his shoulder and made Toby 
understand that he was to go to work under the 
long platform which held the ovens. So he 
marched Toby down the stairs and into the 
darkness under the platform. Suddenly Toby 
felt his arms gripped from behind and strong 
hands pinned them to his side, while out of the 
darkness in front loomed up the burly figure of 
the manager. He carried a short whip and this 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 165 

he proceeded to lay on to poor Toby, any place 
at all that he could hit. The lad wriggled with 
all his might, and finally succeeded in getting 
his arms free; then grabbing the whip in his 
left hand, he planted the manager one between 
the eyes with his right, and down he went. 
Then, quick as a cat, he wheeled on the other 
German, smashing at him with his pop bottle. 
The man tried to protect his face, but Toby's 
rage gave him the strength of madness, and the 
first blow broke the German's arm. Toby fol- 
lowed this up with another, and this time gave 
him a beauty just over the eye. He went down 
as if he was shot, and Toby started to walk 
away. By this time the manager had come to a 
little, and he called on Toby to "Halt!" but 
Toby paid no attention and the manager fired 
two shots after him. What he had been through 
possibly affected his aim; at any rate, he missed 
and Toby walked quietly back to his place and 
began work again. The Germans were too 
proud to let their comrades know how the lad 
had beaten them up, so they contented them- 
selves mth reporting him privately to the 
guard and giving him seven days' close confine- 
ment. Next day, as I passed the prison, I called 



166 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

and asked him how he was, and he said, "Fine! 
I could beat up half a dozen more 'square-heads' 
if I had them here ; this is better than working 
on a coke oven, anyway." After Toby got out 
of jail the boys gave him a great ovation. They 
cheered him, carried him round on their arms, 
and fed him with everything they could lay 
their hands on. Nothing could keep down a 
boy with a spirit like his, and he made his escape 
about two months after I did. He was to have 
come with me, but had a sore foot, so we had 
to leave him behind. Poor kid, it's the only 
time I ever saw tears in his eyes. 

The only redeeming feature of my work on 
the coke ovens was that I was out of doors and 
could get a glimpse of the surrounding country. 
Spring had come, and the fine weather made me 
long for freedom. 

Three of us got together one night and figured 
out a way of escape ; one chap known as Blackie, 
another called Sammy, and myself. Now, as I 
said before we worked in shifts, one week at 
night, the next during the day. It was during 
the night shift that we planned to get away ; but 
there were two things we needed badly — 
namely, a map and a compass. We were talk- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 167 

ing this thiDg over one night when Sammy said, 
''I have a scheme." We told him to get it off 
his chest. ''Well," he said, "I think I know 
where I can get a map and a compass ; I work 
with a German civilian whom I think could be 
easily bribed. ' ' Blackie said, ' ' What makes you 
think so?" Sammy answered, ''I have worked 
with this fellow for three nights, and I have 
been treating him to some of my lunch, and he 
seems to be pretty hungry. ' ' Then he said, ' * We 
will all save food from our next parcel issue — • 
chocolate, bully-beef, and biscuits — and I will 
take them and see what I can get for them." 
We all agreed, but we hadn't much hope of get- 
ting what we wanted. In two days along came a 
parcel issue and we saved out all we could spare 
and handed it over to Sammy. Next day Sam- 
my took it with him, but brought it back when 
he came from work. When I saw him I said, 
"No luck, Sammy." He said, ''Sure — come 
here and I'll tell you all about it." He said, 
"I got him going fine, and he'll bring the map 
and compass tomorrow." "Then, why did you 
bring back the food!" "Oh," he said, "I just 
showed it to him, and his eyes stuck out a mile," 
but I said, ' ' No, Fritzie, this i^ for yoij when you 



168 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

bring the map and compass ; so I think I have 
him." Sure enough, Sammy went off the next 
day with his little bag of rations. About two 
hours after we got started to work Sammy 
came along to where I was working and said, 
"Jack, I have it." We wanted to have a look 
at it right then, for it seemed too good to be 
true, but when we were looking at it we were 
nearly caught by one of our guards who hap- 
pened to be passing. We curbed our curiosity, 
and did not bring out our treasures again until 
we were safe in our huts. 

Every night we pored over our map and laid 
plans for our escape the following week when 
we would be put on night shift ; but before the 
week was up I was put on a different job. In- 
stead of shovelling coke I was set to filling small 
cars with coal. This took me away from the 
boys, and at first I was very much discouraged. 
But the new place where I worked was a large 
coal shed and quite dark; right at the back I 
found an unused door which was unlocked. 
Opening it, I discovered an iron ladder leading 
to the ground, and I said to myself, ''This is 
just the chance we've been looking for." That 
night I told the boys of my find, and they said. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 169 

*'Yes, but how are we going to get there?" for 
between this coal house and the platform where 
the boys worked was a distance of one hundred 
yards. But I told them how I thought it could 
be managed, and we made our plans to try it 
that way. 

We planned to make our "getaway" on the 
Tuesday of the following week, so we set about 
collecting provisions for our journey. All our 
pals were willing to contribute, and they gave 
us bully-beef and biscuits from their scanty 
stores. We could hardly wait for the time set 
for our starting, but at last the night came. 

Every night at twelve o'clock the guards left 
their posts and marched the prisoners back to a 
hut for lunch. It was on our way back from this 
lunch that we hoped to get away. The g-uards 
always left us at the foot of the stairs leading up 
to the coke ovens, and they stayed at the foot 
of the ladder until the last prisoner was 
mounted. This night we had made up our 
minds that we should be the first ones up the 
ladder, for time meant everything to us. A 
guard was stationed at the foot of the ladder 
leading from the coal shed, and we had to make 
the distance before he did. Our path lay past 



170 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

the coke ovens, across a bridge to the coal house, 
through it aud down the ladder. We didn't 
dare run, for we were surrounded by German 
civilians, but I assure you the time we made 
wasn't slow. 

Blackie and Sammy came with me instead of 
stopping at their ovens, and we trusted to the 
friendly darkness to keep them from being de- 
tected. We won our race and reached the bot- 
tom of the ladder a full minute before the 
guard reached his post; so we Avere off on the 
run for a small wood which was about six hun- 
dred yards away. We reached it in safety and 
congratulated each other on our escape. We 
stayed there only long enough to get our wdnd, 
then we started off at a good brisk walk; as far 
as we knew we had not been missed, for there 
was no pursuit. We walked until 4 a.m. across 
the country, then we came to a large wood where 
we hid for the day. 

Next night we started out about 9 p.m., and 
after a short walk we came to a large river. By 
consulting our map, we found it was the River 
Lippe, and we scouted along its banks in search 
of something to take us across. Unfortunately 
there was no boat in sight, and just when we 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 171 

had made up our minds to swim it I discovered 
an old bridge. It had been condemned and was 
no longer in use, but we were only too glad to 
try it; crawling carefully across in case there 
should be a guard at the other end. Just as we 
reached the centre we encountered a barbed wire 
entanglement. This made us feel quite at home, 
and we fancied we were back in the trenches. 
By the time we got through the wire, our clothes 
were in rags, but nothing could dampen our 
spirits, not even the rain that was falling, now 
that we were really getting away. We reached 
the end of the bridge in safety and found that 
it was not guarded, so we kept right on. The 
first thing we knew we came in sight of a village, 
and as it lay right in our way we decided to risk 
going through it. It was 2 a.m., and we marched 
through the main street of the town and not 
even a dog barked. We continued marching as 
long as it was dark, and just at daybreak we 
were fortunate enough to come to a small forest. 
It had been planted, and there were roads on 
every side ; and although it was only three miles 
from a large military training camp, we decided 
to risk the day there. 

We were very tired and two of us slept while 



172 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

the other kept watch. About 10 a.m. we were 
awakened by the sound of music, and on investi- 
gation found that a German battaHon was com- 
ing our way. My heart was in my mouth as 
they came nearer and nearer, and I dreaded lest 
they might stop for a rest. They came within 
fifty yards of our hiding-place, and we could 
hear the officer's commands: ''Right — left — 
right — left," but to our intense relief they 
passed us by. Just as they passed we heard 
the order given, ''Alle singen," for the German 
troops do not sing because they feel like it but 
because they are commanded to. I had found 
this out from a German civilian who worked be- 
side me in the mines. 

All that day people passed up and down the 
roads, and we had some narrow escapes. One 
man came swinging along through the bush, and 
he passed within ten yards of us. We thought 
that day would never end, and longed for night 
and the friendly darkness. It was 10 p.m. be- 
fore it was safe for us to leave our cover, but 
at last we were on the tramp again. About 2 
A.M. we came in sight of the big prison camp at 
Dulmen. It was only about one and a half miles 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 173 

from us, and we could see the sentries making 
their rounds on the outskirts. We had all been 
there when we first entered Germany, so it 
looked quite familiar ; but still I cannot say we 
had any desire to get back. 

Travelling on, we came to a large swamp, and 
had either to wade through or go six miles 
round. We decided on the former plan, and 
soon were up to our waists in water. It was 
early in May and the nights were still very cold, 
and the water was like ice ; but there was noth- 
ing to do but go through, now that we were wet, 
and as Blackie said, ''It was bad luck to turn 
back." For two hours we waded, and at last, 
chilled to the bone, we reached the other side. 
Here we found ourselves in a farming district, 
and we looked eagerly for a safe warm place to 
hide in for the day. A deserted-looking build- 
ing off by itself caught our eye, and it proved 
to be an implement shed with a small quantity 
of hay in the loft. This looked good to us, and 
taking off our wet clothes we buried ourselves 
in the hay. After a good sleep and our daily 
ration of one biscuit and a small piece of bully- 
beef, we felt better but still very hungry. All 



174 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

round us German farmers were working in their 
fields, but fortunately none of them came near 
us, and that day we had a good rest. 

Night came on and we started out once more ; 
this was our fourth night. About midnight we 
came to a farmhouse, and Blackie asked us how 
we would like a chicken. We said, ''It would 
look good to us," and so we proceeded to hunt 
one up. Leaving Sammy on guard, Blackie and 
I made a tour of all the outbuildings, but there 
was no sign or sound of a chicken. We were 
about to give up when we noticed a small build- 
ing at the end of the house. We went around 
one side, but failed to find an entrance; and 
coming to the end of the building, we turned the 
corner, when all at once a terrific howl arose, 
and our hair stood on end. Blackie had stepped 
on a big dog that was chained to the house. 
We did not wait to make the acquaintance of 
our newly found friend, but threw ourselves 
over fences, making the best time possible. The 
dog barked furiously and we ran half a mile 
before we felt safe to stop and get our breath. 
We kept to the roads for the remainder of the 
night and made good time. We struck some 
bush coming up to morning, and it looked so 



INTO THE JAWS OF, DEATH 175 

quiet tliat we decided to lay up there for the 
day. Nothing happened that day, and our 
greatest trouble was a growing hunger. 

Night came, and we were all excited, for this 
was our fifth night and we judged that we were 
close to the Holland border. x\s soon as dark- 
ness fell we made our way cautiously out, and 
after a short walk, came in sight of a good-sized 
town. Our map showed two towns, one on 
either side of the border, but as the map was 
not scaled, we could not tell which one was on 
the border. As near as we could figure, the 
German town was a night's travelling from the 
border, and we decided we couldn't make the 
Holland town that night, so we took the first 
cover we came to and laid up for the day. 
Everything seemed very quiet, and the only dis- 
turbance came from some wild birds on a slough 
nearby. 

We had come to the end of our rations. The 
day before we had only one biscuit among the 
three of us, and we were in a quandary to know 
how to divide it. It was hardtack and it would 
neither break nor cut; so finally we marked it 
off into thirds with a pencil and each one ate up 
to his line. We had nothing for a morning meal, 



176 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

and as we lay there, thinking how hungry we 
were, Blaekie surprised us by taking from his 
pocket a small tin of cocoa. He had been keep- 
ing it for emergency rations, and we almost ate 
him in our joy at seeing anything eatable. The 
can was quickly opened, and the three of us pro- 
ceeded to munch down dry cocoa. It stuck in our 
throats and we looked like greedy chickens that 
had taken pieces larger than they could swallow. 
We finished our tin of cocoa and everything 
seemed so quiet that w^e thought it might be safe 
to get up and try to warm our feet. So we each 
chose a large tree and, keeping behind it, we 
stamped around in our endeavour to work up 
a circulation. We had only been at this a few 
minutes, when to our great astonishment a voice 
behind us said ''Guten Morgen!" We wheeled 
around and found ourselves covered by a 
double-barrelled shotgun. It was in the hands 
of a military policeman who was guarding the 
border. There was no use resisting, and our 
feelings are better imagined than described as 
we were marched back to the nearest town. It 
was two miles away, and in all that distance he 
kept us covered every second. I said to Blaekie, 
''Gee, I wish this son of a gun would take his 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 177 

gun off us for a minute, ' ' and Blackie said, ' ' No 
chance of his risking that, but I'm afraid that 
the crazy nut will pull those triggers, the way 
he is trembling, " so we had to march along, not 
knowing what minute we would be shot in the 
back. 

Eeaching the town, which we found to be 
Stadtlchn, we were handed over to the military 
staff, and to our amazement the officer pulled a 
paper out of his desk and read out our names : 
Blacklock, Woods, and O'Brien. It was evi- 
dent that word had been sent to the border 
towns warning them to be on the lookout for us. 
Even after we got into the room that fool M. P. 
kept us covered with his gun, and being in the 
presence of his superior officer made him more 
nervous, and his hand shook worse than ever. 
With six other men in the room, he wasn't in 
much danger of losing his six hundred marks. 
One of the boys said, ''Isn't that fool ever go- 
ing to put down his gun?" and the officer must 
have understood what he meant, for he gave a 
command in German, and the man not only put 
down his weapon, but he took out the shells. 
We breathed easier after that. The officer in 
charge asked the policeman where he caught us, 



178 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

and be answered, ' ' Twenty minutes ' walk from 
the Holland border." Tbis was tbe hardest 
blow of all, for we could have made it easily bad 
we only known. Well, they searched us, and 
yet they failed to find our map and compass. 
These were bidden in a knitted belt made for me 
by one of our prisoners. It contained a secret 
pocket, the entrance to which was carefully 
concealed. Not finding anything, we were 
lodged in the town jail, and there we stayed 
until the following day. We were almost 
starved, but all we bad was a piece of bread 
and a bowl of soup. 

Next morning two guards came to take us 
back to the mine — we went by train and ar- 
rived about 6 P.M. Of course they gave us a 
warm reception. As soon as we entered the 
gates we were met by German boots — with feet 
inside — and in this w^ay were escorted to our 
quarters. Once there we were made to stand 
''at attention" for seven hours, with a guard 
behind ready with his boqt in case you moved. 
At 1 A.M. they allowed us to go to our barracks, 
and we were staggering from hunger and weak- 
ness. Here a plea^sant surprise awaited us. 
Our pals had collected all the food they could 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 179 

find and had put it in our bunks. I assure you 
it tasted good. 

The next morning Ave were brought up for 
trial and closely questioned as to why we wanted 
to escape. Sammy told them we wanted a 
change, that was all. After this we were con- 
ducted by two officers and an interpreter back to 
our coke ovens, and from there we were taken, 
one at a time, to show them where we had 
gotten through their lines. Blackie was taken 
first and he led them down a ladder and past 
three sentries. Sammy and I took them over 
the same route ; and they were quite convinced 
that we escaped that way. That night we 
laughed w^hen v^e saw they had an extra sentry 
stationed there. Already we were planning to 
make another attempt at getting away, and we 
hoped to go the same road. But instead of night 
duty we were put on day shift, so we had to wait 
another week. Before the week w^as out I had 
a narrow escape. The prisoners working in the 
mines were under the supervision of the large 
prison camp at Miinster, and once or twice a 
week they would send out an officer to look us 
over and see how we were behaving. The one 
chosen to look after our camp was a big burly 



180 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

brute, who showed his teeth and snarled like a 
cross dog. Even the guards were scared to 
death of him, and you could see them tremble 
and shake when he approached. No doubt they 
were afraid that they might lose their job if he 
could find any reason for reporting them. He 
seemed to hate the English even more than the 
other Germans did, and that wasn't necessary, 
but his chief aim in life seemed to be to catch 
an Englisher disobeying any of the camp rules, 
and as soon as he came inside our yard he would 
always make a bee-line for our hut. He paid no 
attention to the French and Russians. It was 
against the rules to smoke in the bunkhouse and 
half the time we were not allow^ed in the yard, 
so of course we broke the rule and smoked, 
only some one always stayed on guard and 
gave w^arning if they saw a "square-head" 
coming. 

Well, this day I was on guard when I saw our 
friend coming on the run. I was standing just 
in the doorway, and I called out ' ' Nix ! ' ' and the 
boys put their fags out of sight in a hurry. 
An instant later the old jay reached the door, 
and he stood sniffing like a dog. It didn't re- 
quire any imagination to smell tobacco smoke, 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 181 

for the air was thick with it, but there wasn't 
a cigarette or pipe in sight. The old ''square- 
head" knew that he was fooled, that some one 
had given them warning, and he snarled like a 
dog. I was standing beside the door because we 
were supposed to freeze whenever or wherever 
he appeared. He must have blamed me for 
warning the boys, for he whipped out his short 
sword, and wheeling quickly made a slash at 
me. That sword whizzed through the air like a 
bullet; and its point went an inch and a half 
into the frame of the door. I had ducked just 
in time or it would have been all off with me. 
I didn't wait to give him another chance, but 
made a bolt out of the door and over to Ruskie's 
hut. He went away raging, for he knew that I 
had slipped one over him. 

While we were waiting two Russians were 
brought back; they had seen us go and made 
their escape the same way. They had neither 
map nor compass, and they were soon caught. 
The day they were brought back we saw them 
being conducted over to the coal shed; and I 
said, "I bet those dubs won't know any better 
than to show them how they escaped," and sure 
enough that is just what they did, so our chances 



182 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

in that direction were cut off, the door was se- 
curely locked and iron bars put across. 

After we had been at work a little more than 
a week the Germans decided we needed further 
punishment for our attempted escape; so we 
were called up and the following sentences read 
to us by an officer who spoke a little English: 
"You shall be put in a dungeon for ten days.'^ 
"You shall not see no daylight." 
"You shall not have no blankets." 
"You shall not take your coats." 
"You shall live on bread and water." 
"If you shall try to get away you shall have 
to die." 

We couldn't keep from smiling at his attempt 
to write commandments. AVe were taken to the 
little prison that was in the centre of our yard. 
It was a tiny brick building containing only six 
cells; it had neither light nor ventilation, and 
the sanitary conditions were simply awful. It 
was worse than the filthiest pigpen you ever 
saw; and even pigs have straw to lie on, but 
we had nothing but the cold wet ground. The 
cells were more like coffins than anything else — 
they were just six feet by three and contained 
no furniture of any kind. Well, this was where 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 183 

we were put, and I assure you we didn't enjoy 
the prospect of spending ten days there. We 
tried to pass the time by calling to each other 
through the walls, but even this was forbidden, 
and our guard would stop it whenever he hap- 
pened to overhear us. Old Blackie was very 
fond of good things to eat, and he always had 
the last of everything in sight ; so Sammy and 
I amused ourselves by planning menus for him 
now that we had nothing but bread and water. 
We pretended that we were his servants and 
whenever we thought that it was getting near 
a mealtime we would read the menu to him. We 
suggested everything we had ever seen or heard 
of — roast turkey, frogs' legs, oysters, fruit of 
all kinds, etc., etc. Blackie would criticize our 
bill of fare, call us do^Ti for not getting some- 
thing nicer, and usually ended up by ordering 
something entirely different. Often when we 
were in the midst of this nonsense, our old jailer 
would come knocking at our door and order us 
to stop talking. Blackie would say, ''Boys, you 
could keep all your fine dinners if I could only 
get at that square-headed son of a gun out there. 
I'd make a meal out of him." 

Of course none of the other prisoners were 



184 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

allowed to talk to us ; but sometimes they would 
bring a book or paper and sit down with their 
backs against the prison wall. As long as the 
sentry was in sight they pretended to read, but 
when he was out of hearing they would tell us 
the camp news, and they took a special delight 
in telling us the good eats they had gotten in 
their last parcels. Of course we hadn't any- 
thing but one piece of black bread and a drink 
of water once a day, and we could only keep 
track of the days by the number of times our 
jailer had been in. Well, one day a chap slipped 
a knife blade under my door and I proceeded to 
make a hole in the wall. I carefully picked out 
the mortar until I had a hole large enough to 
peek through. The first one I made was too 
high; I didn't want to stand every time I looked 
out, so I plugged it up with a piece of my black 
bread and made another near the floor. Here 
I could lie down and see what was going on in 
the yard; and when Blackie had his imaginary 
breakfast he would call for the '^Continental 
Times," and I w^ould take the plug out of the 
wall and give him the morning news — what 
shifts were going out, who was on them, etc. 
But we came near losing even this little bit of 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 185 

pleasure, and this is what happened: Some of 
the prisoners were planning an escape, and they 
dug a hole through the wall of their hut — the 
bricks were loose, ready to take out, and on the 
night they were to go my friend Macdonald, 
who was the ringleader, began to carefully re- 
move the bricks — he took out two, and then it 
occurred to him that he had better take a peek 
out, and make sure that no one was watching, 
so he did ; and there, only a few feet away, was 
a sentry, with his rifle pointed at the hole ready 
to blow the head off the first man who appeared. 
Needless to say, Mac did not go any farther; he 
w^arned the others, and they all crawled back to 
their bunks, and went to sleep. Next morning 
there was a big row made, and the guards tried 
to make the prisoners tell what ones were plan- 
ning to escape, but no one squealed ; and they 
were all stood "at attention" for two hours. 
Then a civilian was brought in with a pail of 
plaster, and he fixed up the hole that the pris- 
oners had made, and with two of the officers he 
made the round of all the huts looking for more 
loose bricks. Finally he came to the prison, and 
one of the officers pushed the little stick he car- 
ried through the first hole I had made. This 



186 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

started them swearing at us, calling us English 
Schweinliunds and everything else they could 
think of. We lay there trying to keep from 
laughing, but at last Blackie exploded ; and gee ! 
they did rave. Finally they found the second 
hole, but I held my hand over it so the stick 
didn't come through — they could feel something 
soft, but had no idea what it was. Just then 
the officers were called away and the old civilian 
stopped up the top hole and moved on — no doubt 
the lower one is there still. 

They took us out on Monday morning and we 
were almost too weak to walk. The boys had a 
meal prepared for us, and we rested all that 
day. Next day they put us to work again, but 
instead of putting us all on the same shift they 
separated us. I was given night duty and the 
other boys were on day shift. I was feeling 
pretty blue the first day I went off to work 
alone, but was surprised and delighted to find 
an old pal of mine was on the same shift. This 
man was Macdonald, who had already made 
three attempts to escape, and when I met him 
he said, "Well, Jack, are you ready to try it 
again?" I said "Sure," and he said, "Well, 
I have everything ready and we will try and get 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 187 

away toniglit." He had a good map and com- 
pass, so I told another prisoner to give mine to 
Sammie in case I got away. We knew the 
number of sentries and had them all located 
except one. It was very necessary that we 
should find out where he was. 

Neither Mac nor I were allowed off the plat- 
form, so I asked another prisoner to let his hat 
blow^ off and then look round for a guard while 
he was do^\Ti after it. He did this, but owing 
to the darkness under the platform he couldn't 
see anything, and he was just coming up when 
the gleam of a bayonet caught his eye ; and here 
was our missing -link — with his back up against 
a pillar at the very spot where we had intended 
going over. That night at lunch hour one of 
the old prisoners came to us and told us to be 
careful, for he had heard two of the sentries 
planning to shoot the first one they found try- 
ing to escape. They figured that if they made 
an example of one, all the others would be 
afraid to make an attempt. We were not fright- 
ened, but they watched Mac and me so closely 
that we had no chance to get away. This was 
kept up for five nights, but on the fifth our op- 
portunity came. 



188 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

But first I must tell you what preparation we 
made in regard to clothes. It would not do for 
us to get away with only our prison garb, for 
it was grey, with wide red stripes down the 
centre of the coat, on the trouser legs, and on 
our caps. The only other clothes in our pos- 
session were those furnished by the Bed Cross ; 
namely, a brown sweater coat and black 
trousers. Now, each night before going to 
work, we were lined up and the officers looked 
us over to make sure no one had any Eed Cross 
clothing on him. But this is how we fixed it. 
The black trousers had brown stripes, because 
the Germans insisted on our wearing stripes of 
some sort. When the Eed Cross sent over the 
first parcels the Germans cut open the trou- 
ser legs and inserted red stripes. This 
work was so roughly done that the garments 
were spoiled, so the Red Cross put in brown 
stripes. 

Now, in preparing for escape we cut this 
stripe out and sewed up the trousers so that they 
were all black. Then we cut the sweater coat 
up to the size and shape of our prison jacket 
and sewed it in. And when w^e lined up for 
examination, instead of throwing open our coats 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 189 

we thrust our hands in our pockets, and this 
opened our coats without turning back the cor- 
ners. We had pulled on the prison overalls 
over our black trousers, so if we got away all 
we had to do was wear our prison jacket inside 
out, drop our overalls, and we were in civilian 
clothes. Still, each night as we lined up our 
hearts almost stopped beating lest they should 
discover our preparation. We couldn't lay in a 
supply of food, for just at this time there was 
a movement of troops at the border and the 
Germans were not bringing any parcels, so if 
we got away we must trust to what we could 
pick up in the fields. 

But now to go back to the fifth night. As 
we went to lunch at twelve o'clock Mac said, 
"Now, Jack, we must make it tonight, for to- 
morrow we go on day shift." I said, ''All 
right, Mac, I'm game; and we shall try for it 
just as soon as we go on duty again." We had 
an hour off for lunch, and as it didn't take long 
to eat a small piece of bread and sup a bowl 
of soup, we usually had a good sleep, but now 
we were too excited to either sleep or eat, and 
sat together and made our plans. 

The platform on which we worked was sit- 



190 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

uated in the centre of the railway yards and 
was as brightly lighted as the main street of a 
city. But this night we noticed two box-cars 
on a track about two hundred yards away, and 
Mac said, ''If we can make them, we are safe." 
So when our hour was up and they marched us 
back, Mac and I were the first two up the ladder. 
We followed about three feet behind the first 
sentry until we got halfway down the platform, 
and wiiile he went dreaming on his way to the 
end of the platform we dropped quietly to the 
ground. We were running when we struck, and 
we certainly beat the record in our two-hundred- 
yard dash to the box-cars, and from there to a 
small bush another two hundred yards away. 
Evidently no one noticed us, for there was 
not a shot fired. Once in the cover of the 
bush we felt safe, and we congratulated one 
another on ha\^ng made at least a suc- 
cessful start. We carried our prison overalls 
with us, as we planned to make use of them 
later on. 

Of course our first job was to get rid of our 
prison clothes, and while w^e were doing this 
we heard a great commotion in the camp. The 
prisoners were being lined up and counted, and 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 191 

we knew that we had been missed. The German 
rule was that if any prisoners escaped the 
officer in charge of the guard at that time was 
sent to the front lines, and this was the most 
dreaded of all punishments. This night a big 
bully was in charge, and he was hated by aU 
the men. One of the prisoners had said early in 
the night, ''Now, Jack, if you intend to get 
away, for goodness' sake go while this brute is 
in charge, for we want to get rid of him." We 
thought of this while we listened to him shout- 
ing out his orders in a voice that could be heard 
a mile. We knew the first thing they would do 
would be to put the bloodhounds on our track. 
They took them to our bunkhouse and let them 
get the scent from there. But we had a little 
plan to get rid of them; as soon as we heard 
them coming we scattered some pepper on our 
trail. We walked all that night, and although 
we heard the hounds occasionally we saw noth- 
ing of our pursuers. Morning found us on the 
edge of about two acres of scrub. The bushes 
Were only about five feet high, but they were 
very thick and well-leaved, so we decided to lay 
up there for the day. Nothing happened until 
about four o'clock in the afternoon, when we 



192 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

were startled by hearing some one coming 
crashing through the bushes. We hugged the 
ground as closely as we could and hardly 
breathed, as the footsteps were coming nearer. 
The bushes were so thick that we couldn't see 
the person, but it sounded as though he was 
coming straight for us. We determined to sell 
our liberty dearly in case we were discovered, 
but to our intense relief he passed about two 
yards from us. We could see his feet and legs 
and could easily have reached out and tripped 
him. He was a German patrol, and he was look- 
ing for us. We watched him after he got past 
to make sure we wouldn't go the direction he 
had taken. We hadn't anything to eat that day 
except one piece of German black bread that 
each of us saved out of our rations the day 
before. 

At 10 P.M. we started on the march again, and 
after about two hours' walking we came to the 
River Lippe. We lost no time looking for a 
boat, but made straight for our old bridge. It 
was easier getting through the wire this time, 
and we had no difficulty in getting across. 
Travelling on, we came to the little town of 
Haltern, but we didn't dare risk going through 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 193 

this time, in case some one was on the lookout 
for us. So we skirted around the edge, and on 
the way came across a few early gardens. It 
was early in June and nothing was very far 
advanced, but we found some young beets, 
which we ate, tops and all, also some seed pota- 
toes. Of the latter we dug up almost the whole 
patch and we filled our pockets and big red 
handkerchiefs which each of us carried. I as- 
sure you these raw vegetables tasted as good 
to us then as any turkey dinner we would have 
at home. After our hasty lunch we started 
off across country. It was much rougher travel- 
ling, but we thought it was safer. Just at dawn 
we came to what we thought was a fair- sized bit 
of woods, and we decided to spend the day there. 
But when daylight had fully come, we found 
that our bush was a very small one and right 
at its edge was a German farmhouse. It was 
too late to go any farther, so we crawled along 
looking for a secluded spot in which to hide. 
Pretty soon we came to some low bushes over 
which a running vine had spread itself, so we 
crept in and lay down. Pretty soon we heard 
voices and the barking of a dog, and peeking out 
we saw an old farmer ploughing just at the edge 



194 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

of the bush. He was followed by two children 
and a dog, and as these played around we ex- 
pected every minute they would land in on top 
of us. There was no sleep for us that day, so 
we lay there munching our potatoes and waiting 
for the darkness. 

At 10 P.M. we started out, and soon we came 
in sight of Dulmen Camp. Once more we 
skirted around it, keeping as far away as pos- 
sible. After a couple of hours we reached the 
swamp that came so near to being the death of 
us on our former trip. This time we went 
around, and though it took longer it was a vast 
deal more comfortable. It was too early in the 
night to make use of our old friend, the imple- 
ment shed, but I passed it with real regret as I 
remembered the comfortable rest I had there. 
But we felt we must push on and run the risk 
of striking something good later in the night. 
We were now in the midst of a good farming 
district, and we decided we must lay in our 
rations for the following day. So, the next 
potato field we came to, we set to work and dug 
up about half of it. Potatoes were very scarce 
in Germany at this time. They were issued out 
to the farmers by the Government and could 



INTO THE JAWS OP DEATH 195 

only be used for seed ; and it tickled us to think 
how angry the old farmer would be when he 
discovered the damage done to his crop. 

It was now getting on towards morning and 
we were very tired and weak, so the first bit of 
woods we came to looked good to us, and we 
decided to camp there for the day. On the way 
we picked up a tin pail and we decided to try 
boiling some potatoes if we got the chance. 
Everything seemed very quiet and it was still 
too early for any one to be around, so we gath- 
ered some wood and made a fire. I got some 
water from a nearby slough and we soon had 
the potatoes on ; after they had been boiling for 
twenty minutes we tried them to see if they 
were nearly ready, but they seemed as hard as 
ever. So we waited another fifteen minutes, and 
still they were not soft. It was hard work wait- 
ing, for we were almost starved, but we let them 
boil for an hour, and Mac said we had better 
take them up before they got too tough to chew ; 
so we started at them, but they were almost as 
tough as leather. We had nothing to eat with 
them but some pepper, and they had nothing to 
recommend them except that they were hot. 
After breakfast we crawled under some bushes 



196 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

and tried to sleep, but our nerves were too 
tightly strung to give us any rest. 

However, we lay there all day, and nothing 
disturbed us. Towards evening a heavy thun- 
derstorm came up, and it rained for two hours. 
Of course we were soaked to the skin, and we 
didn't look forward with much pleasure to our 
night's w^alk. Owing to the storm, darkness 
came on earlier than usual, so we got started 
in good time. We started out across country, 
and after travelling for two or three hours we 
came to a pasture field. We saw some cows in 
the distance, and Mac asked me if I could milk. 
I said, ''It is a long time since I tried, but I 
would make a good stab at it for the sake of 
having a drink right now." Mac stayed on 
guard at the fence while I took our potato pail 
and went over to make the acquaintance of 
Bossy. There were three cows in the bunch, and 
choosing the one that looked most friendly I 
went up and introduced myself. I'm not sure 
she understood all the nice things I said to her, 
but her feminine vanity seemed to be pleased 
with the patting I gave her. At last I broached 
the subject of my visit, and taking * ' silence for 
consent," I took my pail and set to work; but 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 197 

the old lady showed her disapproval by walking 
away. Of course I followed, and once more re- 
sorted to flattery. When I thought I had her 
worked up sufficiently, I tried again for milk, 
but with the same result. This was repeated 
several times, and at last my patience was ex- 
hausted, so I hailed Mac, and when he came I 
urged him to continue the petting business while 
I tried for milk. He did this, and it worked 
splendidly; we got sufficient milk to give us 
both a good drink. It seemed to put new life 
into us. This was our fourth day out, and 
we were almost famished. After we finished 
our drink we thanked our old cow and started 
on the march again. This seemed to be our 
lucky night, for soon we came across a garden, 
and w^e laid in another supply of potatoes. Con- 
tinuing on our way, we came to a fine road. It 
was bordered on each side by the most beautiful 
elm trees, and as it was leading in the right 
direction we determined to follow it. After 
walking about a mile we came to a farmhouse 
and right beside the road was a milk-stand. It 
held three cans of milk, and we couldn't make 
up our minds w^hether the farmer had intended 
them for the milkman or for us. We preferred 



198 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

to think the latter, so we proceeded to help our- 
selves. 

We sat there and drank milk until we felt 
that we must look like ''observation balloons." 
Then we filled our potato pail and went on. But 
we didn't feel much like walking and decided to 
lay up in the first likely-looking place that we 
came to. The whole country is beautifully 
wooded, so it was not long before we came to a 
nice bluff. It looked nice and quiet, and we 
settled ourselves for the day. We w^ere very 
tired, and we both fell asleep, but I woke with a 
start, for I heard something coming through the 
bush. I wakened Mac, and we grasped our 
heavy w^alking sticks and lay still. The sound 
came nearer and nearer, and just when our 
nerves were at breaking point two bright eyes 
looked down at us over the edge of the little 
hollow we were in — it was a hedgehog. We 
couldn't keep from laughing at the scare it had 
given us. I wanted to take revenge, but Mac 
said, "No, let the little devil alone, it's a sign 
of good luck. ' ' Nothing else happened that day, 
and we chewed away at our raw potatoes and 
drank milk as we waited for darkness. When 
it came we started out again across country. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 199 

About 1 A.M. we came to a railroad track and 
after looking carefully in case there should be a 
sentry on guard, we crossed and came up on a 
carefully graded road. It was difficult travel- 
ling this night because, owing to the clouds, we 
had to depend entirely on our compass. We 
were not sure how the road ran, so while Mac 
got out his searchlight and endeavoured to read 
the compass I kept watch. If it was only get- 
ting a drink, one was always on guard. A mov- 
ing figure in a field at the edge of the grade 
caught my attention, and at first I thought it 
was an animal. So it was, but of the two-legged 
German variety. He had seen our light, and 
suspecting that we were prisoners he deter- 
mined to get a good shot at us. I suppose he 
could almost see the four hundred marks offered 
by the Government as a reward for a prisoner, 
dead or alive. He was coming in a stooping 
position, and the night w^as so dark that I wasn't 
sure it was a man until he raised his rifle and 
straightened up. Then I grabbed my chum and 
said, *'A man, Mac," and we made a bolt for 
cover. The shot rang out, but he did not get us, 
and before our pursuer could climb the grade 
we were safely hidden in the bush. This was a 



200 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

warning that we were getting into the ''danger- 
hole" district, for the man who shot at us was 
a police patrol. 

Let me explain how the Holland border is 
guarded. It is well known that the border be- 
tween Belgium and Holland is protected by a 
fence of live wires; but the Holland and German 
border is looked after by a wonderful system of 
patrols. This patrol system begins on a road 
two miles back from the border and running 
parallel with it. On this road there are three 
different kinds of patrols — men on horseback, 
on bicycles, and on foot — and instead of going 
singly, they were in parties of from three to 
ten. This is typical of the German at war and 
at home; he is much too cowardly to attempt 
anything single-handed. That's why their of- 
ficers continue to send them over in massed for- 
mation; though sometimes it almost made our 
gunners sick the way they had to mow them 
down. Well, as I said, they patrolled their beats 
in parties ; and this outside beat is well looked 
after. Crossing this first patrol, and leading 
into the border, there is a road every half-mile, 
and of course each road has its own special 
patrol — also another patrol has his beat in be- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 201 

tween these roads ; while close to the border are 
two more lines of guards: one of these is sta- 
tionary and the men are placed two hundred 
yards apart, and right in front of these guards, 
on each quarter-mile beat, walked a man, having 
two immense bloodhounds on leash. 

Now, all this elaborate guard system was not 
put there for the sole purpose of catching a few 
escaping prisoners. But at this time the Ger- 
man soldiers were deserting in such large num- 
bers, and getting over into Holland, that the 
Government took this method of stopping them. 
Now, this was what Mac and I were up against 
in attempting to cross the Holland border, and 
we realized the difficulties only too well, for Mac 
had learned it all by bitter experience. One 
stormy night, some weeks previous, he had 
crossed the border into Holland, only to lose his 
way, and stray back into Germany. He was 
captured by the guards and sent back to the 
mines. This was his third attempt as well as 
mine, and we knew it would go hard with us if 
we were caught again. So, after our brush with 
one of these game wardens who also acted as 
police patrol, we were doubly careful. We kept 
in the shadow of the trees and watched every 



202 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

step. When suddenly, right before us, shone 
out the whiteness of a graded road and we knew 
that we were in the line of the outside patrol. 
We crou'ched in the darkness at the edge of the 
wood and listened, but not a sound came to our 
ears, and in a moment or two Mac whispered 
''Now, Jack," and we made a dash across, when 
to our utter amazement three figures sprang up 
right in front of us and we found ourselves 
looking into three rifle barrels. A gruff Ger- 
man voice called, "Halt! Who goes there?" 
and we threw up our hands and grunted a reply. 
Immediately the guns were lowered and the men 
came toward us, but instead of finding two help- 
less prisoners, they were met by good hard 
blows delivered in true British fashion. We 
had taken them completely by surprise, and in 
a few minutes we were able to break through. 
We didn't wait to see what condition they were 
in, but made the best time possible to a place 
of safety. We heard one of them blow his 
whistle, just after we got away, and a couple of 
shots were fired, but if reinforcements came we 
did not see them. We kept on going until we 
thought we were safe from pursuit, and we 
began looking for a place in which to lay up for 



INTO THE JAWS OP DEATH 203 

the day. This was our seventh day without food 
excepting raw vegetables, and our strength was 
almost exhausted. 

This encounter with the patrols had used us 
up pretty badly owing to our weakened condi- 
tion, and we knew that the supreme test was still 
ahead. Presently, right in the centre of the 
bush, we came to a place where the slough grass 
was very long and thick, and we decided to risk 
spending the day there. We were now in the 
centre of the patrol district, and there was no 
safe place ; but we hoped to be fortunate enough 
not to be too close to the beat of the nearest 
patrol. We pulled a quantity of long grass and 
buried ourselves in it. Although very tired, 
sleep was out of the question, and we lay there 
planning how we could get through the last two 
lines of guards. 

About 8 A.M. we were alarmed by the noise 
of some one crashing through the bushes, and 
our hearts beat like hammers as we listened to 
the sound growing nearer. Of course we were 
sure it was a patrol, and we began to fear our 
little game was up. AVe lay there scarcely 
breathing, and all at once voices reached us, and 
Mac whispered to me, "Gee! they must have 



204 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

women in this patrol. " We peered through the 
grassy cover, and there, coming straight to- 
wards us, were two young German girls. The 
wooden shoes they wore accounted for the great 
racket they made, but I assure you we felt very 
much relieved, though our danger was still very 
great, for they could give the alarm, and we 
did not know who might be near. 

A short distance from us they took oif their 
coats, and we saw they had come to work. All 
through this part of the woods were scattered 
bundles of small sticks for firewood, and the 
girls' job was to collect these and carry them to 
a road some three hundred yards distant. The 
young ladies kept up a continual chatter, and 
perhaps it was this that kept them from dis- 
covering our hiding-place, for they came within 
two or three yards of us. At twelve o'clock 
they started home, and as soon as they were out 
of sight we got up and stretched ourselves. It 
was so good to move after lying still for four 
hours. However, we didn't dare stay up 
very long, and we were "tucked in" once more 
when the girls got back. This time there were 
three, and they worked away until about four 
'clock. We had to lie like mice, aad we were 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 205 

in constant terror lest one of us should sneeze 
or cough. Just about four we heard one girl 
say ''Fertig" (or "finished"), and the three 
went out and sat on the side of the wood to 
continue their chat. We felt very much relieved 
and were congratulating ourselves on another 
escape when w^e heard a man's voice, and look- 
ing out of our hiding-place we saw an old man 
in conversation with the girls. He had evi- 
dently counted the bundles and was insisting 
that there were still some left in the bush. They 
argued for quite a while, and then to please the 
old man the girls came back. But it was evident 
they felt sore over having to come, for instead 
of searching for wood, they walked right 
through the bush and out to the road on the 
other side. There they sat down and after 
awhile moved on home, or at any rate out of 
sight. We were glad to be able to move again 
and to be relieved of our uninvited company. 
As soon as we were sure they were not coming 
back we got up and moved around to get the 
ache out of our bones. We also had some prepa- 
rations to make for our final effort that night. 
As I mentioned before, we had carried our 
prison overalls with us, and now we were to put 



206 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

them to use. Our only chance of getting over 
the border lay in our being able to move so 
quietly that the sentry could not hear us. So we 
started to make moccasins out of our discarded 
overalls. We had neither scissors, needles, 
nor thread, but our experience had taught us 
that in all circumstances we must make what ive 
did have serve our purpose. Our jackknife cut 
out our moccasins, and it also made a small stick 
into an implement that could punch holes, while 
some pieces of cord that we happened to have 
did fine in place of thread. It took quite a while 
to get our moccasins made, working with poor 
tools, and they were fancy-looking articles when 
we at last had them finished. The red trim- 
ming was very fetching, but we thought it quite 
appropriate, for there is always a lot of red 
tape necessary in getting out of a country that 
is At War. It was almost dark when we had our 
moccasins finished, so we put them on and made 
ready for our start. Our boots were securely 
fastened to our belts, and we took a final look 
at our map. We were almost famished, but two 
raw potatoes was all that remained in '^the 
larder." However, we disposed of these, and 
just at 11 'clock we started out. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DBATH 207 

The direction to the border was straight west, 
and we figured it must be a mile and a half to 
the nearest point. But we had to keep under 
cover as much as possible, so we couldn't tell 
just when we might be near it. We crossed the 
wood at the side of our bush, and a few min- 
utes' walk brought us in sight of a small pasture 
field in which there were three or four cows. 
The sight of these brought to our minds the 
dandy drink of milk we had two nights before, 
and though we took an awful risk, going out 
into the open, we thought it worth while. Once 
more Mac stood on guard, and I crawled out to 
where the cows were grazing. I tried them, one 
after another, but not a drop of milk could I 
get. They had evidently been milked a short 
time previous. I made the trip back in safety, 
and we started out, not knowing what minute 
we might happen on a sentry's beat, which made 
our going exceedingly slow. ■' 

About 12.30 we came to the edge of a swamp, 
and here and there all through it we saw dark 
objects that looked like men. We lay in the 
long grass and watched to see if we could notice 
any movement. Sometimes we thought there 
was, and then again we were sure they were sta- 



208 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

tionary. However, we had to pass them, so we 
crawled carefully forward, and made our way 
close to where one of these objects was standing, 
and when we thought we were near enough we 
raised up and took a look. It was a stack of 
peat piled to just about the size of a man. We 
had a good laugh, and I assure you we felt very 
much relieved. We made our way safely across' 
the swamp and had just reached the other side 
when we heard the hounds. We listened, and 
noted that the sound came from across the 
swamp, just the direction we had come. Mac 
said, ''Jack, they are on our track; we had 
better put out some pepper;" so we sprinkled 
it on our tracks and, crouching as low as pos- 
sible, moved along. The sound was getting 
nearer, and suddenly, to our right, we heard a 
sentry call ''Halt!" But instead of stopping 
we ran for all we were able. We heard the 
sentry call three times, and then a shot rang out. 
There was no attempt at concealment now, we 
were running for our lives, or what was dearer 
still — our liberty. There was a grove of trees 
just ahead, and we knew that we still had a 
chance if we could reach that. One more spurt 
and we were there, and had thrown ourselves 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 209 

down with our faces toward the open country we 
had just left. We were pretty well out of 
breath, but we dared not stay longer than was 
necessary to get our wind, so we pushed on, for 
we were anxious to get across the border in the 
darkest part of the night. We stole along like 
ghosts, for we did not know what moment we 
might run up against the border guards. We 
decided that the shot we had heard on our right 
had come from a passing patrol. 

We kept on until 4 a.m., and as it was getting 
a little bit light we saw in the distance what 
looked like a small town. We were much aston- 
ished, because if we read our map aright the 
only town on our route should have been passed 
the night before. We lay up in a field and 
talked it over, but we couldn't locate ourselves. 
It wouldn't do for us to lay up for a day so 
near a town, so we must either turn back or 
hasten on. At last I said, ''Let's flip a coin and 
see which we will do — heads, we go on; tails, we 
turn back." We did this, and it turned out 
** heads," so on we went. I forgot to say be- 
tween us and the town was a canal, and we 
couldn't find a bridge. This canal was another 
puzzling feature. Well, we swam it, and came 



210 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

out very wet, cold, and tired. We passed within 
half a mile of the town and finally struck the 
main road on the other side. It was now day- 
light, and w^e had to be on the lookout for people 
every instant. Finally we saw a signpost just 
ahead, and we thought that would surely solve 
our problem. But when we came to it we found 
the lettering had become almost obliterated. 
One town that the hand pointed to we figured 
out as ''Neda," but the one w^e had just passed 
could not be made out. Finally, with Mac's 
help, I climbed up to the top of the pole, and 
from there I made out a few of the letters. 
Comparing these with an address I had found 
on a piece of wrapping paper earlier in the 
morning, I made out the name as ''Haaks- 
hergen. ' ' However, our map didn 't show either 
of these towns, so we were just as much at sea 
as ever. 

Then it occurred to us that the border troops 
must be stationed in either one of these towns, 
and there would surely be some of them passing 
on this road; so we determined to hide in the 
ditch close by and watch for them. We came 
to a place where there were some bushes grow- 
ing at the side of the ditch and we hid in these. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 211 

Finally we saw two mounted men coming, but 
they passed so quickly that we couldn't see much 
except that they wore grey uniforms. We 
waited a little longer, and along came two sol- 
diers on foot. One of these was evidently sick 
or wounded, for just as they came opposite us 
he begged to be allowed to sit down. They 
talked for a minute or two and then moved on, 
but we had a good look at them. They wore 
exactly the same uniform as the German ex- 
cepting that their hats were different. Instead 
of a "pill-box" they had a cap with a square 
top. All at once I remembered having seen 
some pictures of Holland soldiers in the Daily 
Mirror (an English paper), and I said, "By 
golly, I believe they are Hollanders," but Mac 
said, "No; if they were, they wouldn't be 
dressed like Germans." One thing we decided 
on, and that was that we must find a safer place 
than the one we were in; so when there was no 
one in sight we made our way to a nearby wheat 
field. We lay there discussing the situation, and 
just at 9 o'clock we heard the whistle of a train. 
We could hardly believe our ears, and we 
crawled to the edge of the field to see in which 
direction it was going. We found it running 



212 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

right into the town we had passed, and now we 
were more muddled than ever, for the German 
town that we thought was on the border hadn't 
a railroad nearer than fifteen kilometers. We 
made our way back into the field, took out our 
map, and tried to solve the problem. 

At last we got desperate; we couldn't go on 
at night unless we found out where we were, so 
we thought we would take a chance on going 
farther down the road. W^e hadn't gone far 
when we saw a man in the distance, and we 
slipped into some bushes until he had passed. 
Going on farther we saw there was a man coming 
on a bicycle. We ducked and hid, and as he got 
nearer we could see that he had a gun strapped 
on his shoulders. W^e were afraid he had seen 
us and we were sure there would be some fun, 
but fortunately he too passed. When every- 
thing was quiet we started out again, and pres- 
ently we spied an old man working on the road. 
He had only a wheelbarrow and shovel, so we 
decided to risk asking him what country we 
were in. When we came up we bid him the time 
of day, and, in the best German we could muster, 
asked, ''Which is this, Germany or Holland?" 
The old man looked at us, smiled, and said ''This 




AS I LOOKED WHEN 1 
LEFT GERMANY 



AS I LOOKED BEFORE I 
SAW GERMANY 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 213 

is Holland." It sounded too good to be true, 
and for an instant we could only stare at him 
and each other, then the realization came that 
we were FREE and we laughed and hugged one 
another in our joy. The old man watched us 
with a sympathetic smile, for though he could 
not understand all that we were saying he knew 
that we were escaped prisoners. We must have 
been a rough-looking pair. We had travelled a 
hundred miles at night over all kinds of country, 
and had been eight days without any cooked 
food. Our faces were covered with hair, and 
our clothes were ragged and dirty. I weighed 
only 125 pounds, and the long period of anxiety 
and mental strain had aged me at least ten 
years. Mac was just as bad, and we must have 
looked more like a couple of jail-birds than any- 
thing else. 

Well, finally we sobered down sufficiently to 
ask the man how far it was to the nearest town. 
He told us it was about five miles to the little 
town of ' ' Neda ' ' ; but before we started he asked 
us if we were hungry. We looked at each other 
and smiled — and the old man understood — he 
insisted on our taking all of his lunch, even the 
bottle of tea that he carried — and I assure you 



214 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

no food ever tasted better. We felt like new 
men after getting something to eat, and we shall 
not soon forget the old Hollander's kindness to 
us. It was with light hearts that we finally said 
** Good-bye" to our new friend and started on 
our way to ''Neda." 

The world looked very different to what it 
had a few hours before, and we were so busy 
talking about our experiences that we scarcely 
noticed a man passing by us on a bicycle. He 
must have heard a scrap of the conversation, 
for he turned and looked, and then jumped off 
his wheel and came toward us. He said, "Are 
you Englishmen?" We said, ''No, not exactly; 
we are Canadians." "Oh," he said, "Cana- 
dians. I am a Hollander myself, but I was 
educated in England ; you must be escaped pris- 
oners." We replied, "Oh, we are not telling 
what we are." He said, "You needn't be 
afraid, for my sympathy is all with the Allies." 
So we told him everything, and he walked with 
us until we got almost to Neda. Then he 
mounted his wheel and rode into town, telling 
every one in sight that we were coming. So 
when we arrived the streets were lined with 
people; men, women, and children turned out 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 215 

to welcome us. They finally conducted us to a 
store where the proprietor spoke English. We 
sat and chatted for a few minutes, and then his 
wife came out with a lunch. She brought bread 
and butter, cake and tea, and I leave you to 
imagine how good it tasted. 

But our friend on the wheel had left us at the 
store, and had reported our coming to the police 
headquarters. So while we were at our lunch 
the chief of police and an attendant arrived and 
asked us to go with them. This didn't look good 
to us — it seemed too much like what we had been 
getting for the past year. I said, "By golly! 
Mac, I don't like this." He said, ''Neither do 
I, but I guess we have to go," so we went along; 
but instead of landing in the police station, the 
chief took us to his own house. Here we were 
made to understand we were guests; and we 
were given water, soap, clean towels, and fresh 
shirts to replace the ones that were torn to 
pieces. After we got cleaned up we felt like 
new men, and our host took us out where a table 
was set under the trees and we had our first 
properly served meal since leaving England — a 
year and nine months. 

Of course we were not given a regular dinner 



216 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

— our friends were too wise for that — heavy 
food would have killed us. All we had was 
bread and butter, cake, and strawberries with 
cream; but oh, they were scrummy. The next 
thing we needed was sleep, and our host wished 
to put us to bed in the house. But we felt much 
too dirty to get into his clean beds, and we 
made him understand we much preferred going 
into the hayloft. So he brought us some blan- 
kets, and we turned in. We slept for fourteen 
hours without waking; that's how badly we 
needed it. AVe wakened at 2 a.m., and at first 
we didn't know where we were. But after we 
got our bearings we went to sleep again and 
didn't wake until nine in the morning. Then 
we got up and had another light meal. We lay 
around and rested all that day, but as their 
English was as limited as our Dutch, conversa- 
tion lagged. That night we had our first taste 
of meat since entering Germany — and maybe we 
didn't enjoy it! 

Early next morning we took the train for 
Rotterdam, the chief sending an escort with us. 
Once there, we were taken to the British consul, 
and after proving our identity we were given 
clothes, money, and a passport for England. It 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 217 

was ten days before we got a boat out of Rotter- 
dam, and during that time we received nothing 
but kindness from the people we met. 

Finally we secured passage on a boat, and on 
the first day of July we landed in England. 



^'MY COMRADES, AND WHAT BECAME 
OF THEM, AS TOLD TO ME IN 
LETTERS, BY MY OLD CHUM BOB 
GODDARD." 



Deae Jack : 

Well, you certainly had a pretty tough time in 
Germany, and I don't envy your experience. 
And now you want to hear what we did after 
you were taken prisoner, and what became of 
the bunch that you and I knew so well. It's not 
pleasant to recall the things that happened, 
Jack, but I'll do my best. Let me see; the 
Battle of St. Eloi was the last scrap you took 
part in. Well, after that things cooled down a 
bit, but we still took our turn in the trenches 
on that part of the line. No. 10 Platoon was 
still intact. We missed poor old Woodrow, and 
his chum Fred went around looking like a ghost. 
The latter had never gotten over his experience 
in No Man's Land, his eyes were sunken in his 
head, and he was nothing but a wreck. One 
night, when we were in reserves in Dickiebush, 
a few of us were talking and saying how lucky 
our little bunch had been, when at that minute 
an order came in sending us out on a working- 
party. Fritz had gotten busy and blown down 
a section of our front lines, and the boys hold- 

221 



222 INTO THE JAWS OP DEATH 

ing this spot had no protection, so we were 
being sent up to repair the damage. I guess 
Fritz was sore, for our Stokes light trench mor- 
tars and heavies had been pounding the German 
trenches all day long. Well, we were told off 
in small parties to carry up sandbags, corru- 
gated iron, picks and shovels, to repair the line. 
Our little bunch consisted of Tommy, Bink, 
Scottie, Bob Richardson, Newell, McMurchie, 
and one or two others whom you do not know. 
*' Flare-pistol Bill" was in charge, of course; 
and just our luck, we had to carry the corru- 
gated iron (and damned awkward stuff it is), 
it's too wide to carry through the trenches, so 
we had to go overland — and I tell you, the 
machine gun fire w^as wicked. The boys holding 
the trenches had a lot of casualties. Well, we 
got our loads and started off in and out of shell 
holes. Tommy fell into a hole that was full 
of water and got soaked ; and Chappie, with his 
poor eyesight, if he fell once, he fell at least a 
dozen times. We went along cursing our hard 
luck, and making the best time we could, for the 
bullets were flying mighty thick. Flares were 
going up every few minutes, and every time one 
went up we would "freeze" till it went out 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 223 

again. At last we got quite close to the front 
line, and when Fritz sent up a flare it would fall 
right behind us. They couldn't help seeing us, 
for we made a lovely target with those big slabs 
of corrugated iron on our heads. The machine 
guns just ripped lead at us, and we were hurry- 
ing to get to the trench, when young Blair got 
it through the thigh. He started to yell at the 
top of his voice ; and Scottie, who happened to 
be next in line, cussed him roundly for the noise 
he was making. We would likely have been all 
killed if he hadn't shut up. Well, they bound 
him up and carried him out, and the rest of us 
W€nt on. 

We hadn't gone fifty feet when Scottie went 
down with a crash, just in front of me. I 
crawled up to him, and he was badly hit — the 
blood was pouring from his mouth, and he 
mumbled ^ ' Stretcher bearer. ' ' Flare-pistol Bill 
went on to the trench to hunt up one, and I 
crawled back to see if I could find the one who 
had come up with us. Before I got back with 
Bob the stretcher bearer from the trench had 
fixed Scottie up as well as he could. Poor 
Scottie! his jaw was shattered. Bink insisted 
on carrying Scottie out on his shoulders, and 



224 INTO THE JAWS OP DEATH 

they started. But before going halfway Bink 
played out, and when Scottie saw that Bink was 
all in he got down and walked to the dressing- 
station. Say, that boy was sure game. By the 
way, he's in Blighty now. Well, the rest of us 
got through safely, we fixed up our trench and 
managed to get back to our supports. A few 
nights later we made another trip tt) the front 
lines, and this was disastrous for No. 10. First 
of all, Tucker got shot in the face while on a 
wiring party ; then Jack Branch was on a work- 
ing party behind the trench when Fritzie 
started shelling, and he got a shrapnel bullet 
through his arm. We bound him up, and he was 
in great pain, but he smiled all the time. As 
he went out, he said, ''I'll give your love to all 
the girls at Shorncliffe." I thought, "Well, 
isn't this a hell of a war, when a man can be 
pleased over getting a bloomin' big hole through 
his arm?" 

Later that same night Tommy Gammon 
was on sentry go, and I was sleeping in the 
dugout behind him, when Corporal Banks came 
in and woke me. He said, "Do you want to see 
Tommy? He's hit." Gee, I jumped up in a 
hurry and ran down the trench to where Tommy 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 225 

was; but I breathed freely when I saw that it 
was only a hole through his arm — I was afraid 
he had got it bad. ^'How did you get it, 
Tommy ?" I said. He said, '*0h, you know the 
sandbags we rolled out of the way to fire 
through last night? — well, I thought some one 
might be walking past and get a bullet through 
his bean, as a fellow had farther down the 
trench, so I put up my arm to roll the bag into 
place, and bingo! Fritzie was right on the job." 
I wrote to Tommy's mother that night and told 
her that I thought Tommy had a Blighty, and 
she came all the way out from Canada to see 
him. But he didn't get farther than our base 
hospital, and he was back to the trenches again 
in six months, so his mother did not see him 
after all. 

Well, after Tommy left us, we were sent back 
to rest billets, and it was then that the Battle 
of Hooge started. We could hear the guns roar- 
ing and at night the whole sky on our left was 
lit up. The roads were jammed with machine 
guns, marching troops, cyclists, and cavalry — 
while coming from the scene of battle was a 
constant stream of ambulances. Tales of what 
was going on came leaking through and we fully 



226 INTO THE JAWS OP D3ATH 

expected to be sent up. But we couldn't move 
without orders, and we thought we might just 
as well enjoy ourselves, so we got up an open- 
air concert. It certainly was a dandy, and we 
had no end of a time. A lot of the old boys took 
part ; and then some one got up and gave us a 
parody on ''The Sunshine of Your Smile." It 
goes like this : 

" Oh, Fritzie that hands those Blighties out so 
free. 
Just send a nice sweet cushy one to me — 
One that will strike me just below the knee. 
Six months in Blighty — oh, how sweet 
'twould be! 

" Send me a shell with pellets nice and round ; 
Scatter them, all but one, upon the ground ; 
Send me that one, but let it come a mile, 

And I will give you the sunshine of my 
smile." 

This met with great applause, and we sang it 
till we all learned the words. The concert was 
scarcely over when our officers told us that word 
had come for us to be ready to move at a mo- 
ment's notice. After talking to some of our 
wounded boys that had come back from the 
fighting, we began to realize that something 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 227 

yery serious was happening. They told us that 
whole battalions of Canadians had been wiped 
out by shell fire. Fritzie had just blown every- 
thing to pieces before he advanced, just the 
same as he did at St. Eloi. We realized that our 
time on rest was likely to be cut short; so we 
got busy and spent all our money — and sure 
enough, next day the order came for us to move, 

and away we went along the road to V just 

behind Ypres. We reached there safely and 
some of our officers and N. C. O.'s went on up to 
the lines to see what kind of a place we were 
going into. They found that we would be on the 
left flank of the attack, and although the Ger- 
mans had blown most of the front line to pieces, 
they had not attempted to advance here. That 
night two companies, A and B, were sent on 
ahead of the rest of us, and they went as near 
the lines as they could in motor-buses, then they 
took over w^hat was left of the front lines, con- 
sisting mostly of shell holes. The rest of us 
were marched through Ypres, and we found it 
a mass of ruins. It was here that we saw the 
affects of war — dirty, horrible, stinking war. 
Hundreds of people were buried when Ypres 
was bombarded, and the stench of the place was 



228 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

unbearable. We followed the railroad for a 
piece and we passed some shell holes made by 
the "Fat Berthas" used by the Germans at the 
beginning of the war. You could bury an ordi- 
nary-sized house in any one of these holes. 
Dead horses were lying everywhere, showing 
that the road we were on had been shelled 
earlier in the evening. We didn't know what 
minute they would open up again, so we hur- 
ried over every crossroad. Fritzie had a mania 
for shelling crossing roads, and those in the 
Ypres salient are all named appropriately. 
Here are a few: ''Shrapnel Corner," ''Hellfire 
Corner," ''Hell Blast Corner." We were 
marching in single file by this time, and every 
man carried a sandbag, bomb, rifle and bayonet, 
rations and a bottle of water. Some load, eh? 
Judging from the flares going up all around us, 
we seemed to be going into a pocket. On our 
right, the machine guns were going all the time, 
and they sounded like a thousand riveting ma- 
chines, only instead of construction their noise 
meant destruction. Pretty soon we came to a 
big barrier of sandbags known as "China 
Wall," and here dead men were lying every- 
where, and we couldn't help stumbling over 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 229 

them on our way in. At last we came to the 
communicating trench, and just as we reached 
it Fritzie sent a salvo of shells across — one or 
two of the boys caught it — the rest of us kept 
on our way. We followed the trench, scrambling 
over parts that were blown in, and stumbling 
over the dead that were lying everywhere. 
Finally we came to the trench that we were go- 
ing to take over, and we relieved what was left 
of the Eoyal Canadian Eifles. They were an 
awful sight, dirty and bloodstained — many were 
shaking as though with a palsy — their nerves 
literally torn to pieces by the shell fire. But 
they had no word of complaint. "All right, 
boys, it's quiet. All's over now," was their 
greeting, but what they said didn't sound 
exactly true, for we had not been in five min- 
utes, when with a roar all of Fritzie 's guns 
opened up once more. Bullets swept over us 
like hail; it was hell let loose. The officer in 
charge was killed almost at once, and Major 

G took over the command. I sat in a bay 

with Sammy, Emerson, and Sergeant-Major 
Banks; the other boys were farther along the 
trench. I had never seen anything like what we 
were getting ; machine guns were enfilading our 



230 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

trench — just at my feet was an old empty water 
can, and the bullets going in sounded as though 
some one was playing a drum. They couldn't 
hit me, because I was behind a traverse, or jog 
in the trench. After a while it quieted down a 
little, but it didn't entirely stop, and next morn- 
ing, just at dawn, it started again, and I hope 
that I shall never be called on to go through 
what I did that day. But if I lived to be a hun- 
dred I could never forget it. Our trench was 
literally blown to pieces, and we couldn't do a 
thing but sit there and curse our gunners for not 
firing back — no doubt they were doing all they 
could, but the terrific noise of bursting shells 
all around us drowned the sound of our own 
artillery, and we fancied that we were not being 
supported. Wounded men were crawling along 
the trench looking for a spot that would offer 
comparative safety, and the rest of us were 
sitting in a daze. I was suffering for a drink, 
and I had no water. I had started to make some 
tea, but a shell knocked a big chunk of dirt into 
the trench and it upset my canteen. I wouldn't 
ask any of the boys for water, for every one 
needed all they had, and we are supposed to 
look after our own. Finally I got desperate, for 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 231 

the smoke and gas from the bursting shells 
parches the throat, and I made a search through 
a dead man's pack. It wasn't pleasant work, 
but I found a tin of milk, and it was worth a 
million dollars to me then. I had just gotten 
my drink, when, all at once, the earth under my 
feet began to heave and I was thrown on my 
face. I scrambled up again, but the earth was 
rocking like a ship at sea. Finally it stopped, 
and we looked over to the front lines which 
were held by A and B companies, but all we 
could see was smoke, black smoke right up to 
the sky, and then we realized what had hap- 
pened. Our front lines had been blown up 
with mines, and now all the artillery that had 
been playing on our front lines was lifted on 
to us, and our hell became worse than ever. 
Then the Germans came and we had our hands 
full. A machine gun battery in a strong point 
just ahead held out, and a trench mortar on our 
left supported us, and our few lads did the rest. 
We were using the Eoss rifle, and we fired it till 
it jammed ; then we grabbed some Lee-Enfields 
that had been left behind by the R. C. R.'s. 
Fritzie seemed doped, and he came forward 
carrying full kit and trench mats. They were 



232 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

evidently surprised to find any one alive, for 
when we began to fire tliey stared around 
stupidly. Then our fire caught him, and as he 
attempted to get through the gap in our front 
lines the portion of line that had not been 
mined swept him with their machine guns. 
All the time our boys were just being 
wiped out mth shell fire. Little Henry Wright 
was hit in the knee and started to crawl out 
over the back of the trench. I grabbed 
him and brought him back and stuck him into a 
hole out of the way of flying splinters. "You 
won't leave me, will you, if you have to go 
back?" he cried. ''Not on your life," said I. 
"But don't be afraid — Fritzie is not going to 
chase us out of here." Just then somebody 
came along and said that the Germans had 
broken through on our right. I looked at 
Sammy and said, "This back to back stuff isn't 
all it's cracked up to be, is it?" Sammy 
grinned and we went on firing, and an officer 
that came along told us that the report we heard 
was not true — our line still held. 

Just then poor old Baldy was blowTi to pieces 
by a shell; he had thrown up his bomb-proof 
job and had come back to the battalion. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 233 

Chappie was struck by a piece of that same 
shell, and he got it right through the lung. Oh, 
how he did suffer! We couldn't take him back 
to the dressing-station on account of the ter- 
rific shell fire, and he lay in a sheltered part of 
the trench slowly bleeding to death. We took 
turns in going to see him. "Tell my little girl 
that I died fighting," he said to Bink. His 
chum, Harriot, came rushing along — ' ' Oh, deah 
boy, I'm so sorry you are hit — cheer up, old 
chap." He, like the rest of us, didn't know 
what to say. But old Chappie didn't ''go 
west" after all. He was ill for a long time, 
but was finally invalided home to Canada. 

While we were worrying over old Chappie a 
call came for volunteers to dig out some men 
that had been buried. McLeod and I grabbed 
shovels, and away we went in the direction 
pointed out. There was smoke everywhere and 
shells were continually coming. We went down 
the trench for quite a distance, and, turning a 
corner, what a sight met our eyes ! There, sit- 
ting around on the firing-step of a bay, were 
nine of our boys, dead. The shell must have 
burst just above them, for they were full of 
holes, and their clothes were on fire. I turned 



234 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

to Mac: ^'Notliing for us to do here, old boy," 
and we started back. Just then I stumbled over 
something, and looking down, I saw that it was 
a body almost entirelj'' buried in the dirt and 
wire netting. I scraped away some of the dirt 
and found that the man still breathed, so I got 
busy and tried to get him out. He was covered 
with the wire that is used to keep our trenches 
from caving in, and it was an awful job getting 
the wire and dirt off. We dug with our shovels, 
and tore at the wire until finally we got him 
extricated. We couldn't see a wound, but we 
thought it might be concussion, but when we 
lifted him up there was a hole in his back that I 
could put my fist in. Poor fellow, I saw that it 
was no use, but I threw some water in his face, 
and he opened his eyes, and tried to speak, and 
then quietly "went west." I went back to 
the boys feeling mighty blue, and their only 
greeting was, ''Where in hell have you been? 
Don't you know your place is here?" but I just 
cursed back, and explained. 

The Germans had stopped coming over by 
this time, but they still held portions of our 
front line. Out of the five hundred men who 
took over our portion of the front trenches, only 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 235 

one or two came out, and this is what they told 
us. They had been shelled for hours and their 
casualties were very heavy, as their only pro- 
tection was shell holes. Then Fritzie started 
to come over, but they gathered in a bunch and 
bombed him back, and then the mines went up 
and that finished them. When Fritzie came 
over the few that were left were half buried 
and dazed, and had lost their rifles, so they were 
taken prisoners. 

In the second line there were about a hundred 
of us left. Spud Murphy, our officer, fought till 
his arm was disabled, but we continued to hold 
the trench. Bink and Sammy took a bunch of 
bombers and went up to the advance post ; and 
that left our numbers still smaller. Just then 
Sergeant Faulkener came in from the strong 
point wounded in the shoulder. He had tried to 
keep it a secret, but loss of blood made him so 
weak that he had to give up. I spoke to him, 
and he said, "Ain't this hell? I get hit every 
little scrap I get into." He had been wounded 
down at Kemmil when Fritzie blew up the 
trenches there. ''Honest John" we used to call 
him, and he was a good old scout. 

The shell fire was still on just as bad as ever. 



236 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

Bob Kichardson, our stretcher bearer, was 
working like a hero, the wounded lying all 
around him, and often the poor fellows were 
hit again before he got through binding them 
up. A boy went past me with a bandage on his 
head. I said, "Hello, Jack, got a Blighty ?" 
He said, ''No, I'm afraid it's not bad enough 
for that." Poor fellow, he was shot through 
the eyes, and he didn't know that he would never 
see again. 

That afternoon, in response to an urgent re- 
quest for help, a company of men from the 29th 
came in. Towards evening the shelling died 
down a bit, and the wounded that could walk 
went out. Carrying parties arrived, and took 
out those who were badly wounded. Chappie 
was one of the first to go. That night the Ser- 
geant came along and said, "Goddard and 
Wilson, go out on listening-post." We looked 
at the spot where he wanted us to go. Fritzie 
was landing shells there about one a minute, 
and there was absolutely no protection. I said 
''Say, Sergeant, that's suicide!" "I know," 
said he, "but I have orders to put a post there." 
I said, "All right, but if I get killed I'll come 
back and haunt you." Well, over the top we 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 237 

went and we got to the place he had pointed out ; 
we had barely lain down in a shell hole when 
whiz-hang! sl shell landed just in front of us. 
It covered us with dirt, and we had hardly 
gotten the dust out of our eyes when whiz- 
hang f another landed just behind us. ''Now," 
thinks I, "if one comes between those two, our 
name is mud." It wasn't more than a minute 
when we heard another coming, and this one 
landed in the part of the trench we had just 
left. Shrieks and groans went up, and Wilson 
and I lay there shaking like leaves. Just then, 
the Sergeant came out and told us to go back 
into the trench, and you bet we were glad to do 
it. We found that the last shell had killed three 
and wounded six, and no doubt we would have 
gotten one had we stayed. It's funny how 
things happen — our Sergeant-Major was badly 
wounded, and I helped to carry him to a place 
of comparative safety, but the poor fellow died 
after his w^ounds were dressed. We buried the 
dead as best we could, and then we hung on for 
two days more. We had no water and scarcely 
any food, and we suffered terribly, especially 
from thirst. Our ration parties were all killed 
trying to get food to us. Bink and some of the 



238 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

boys on the outpost were relieved first, and they 
brought us water. Poor lads, they had been 
sitting on an old culvert with water up to their 
waists. The only sleep we got all this time 
was during the day w^hen we lay in the mud at 
the bottom of the trench. We were relieved on 
the third night, and oh, what joy when the 29th 
came in and took over the trench! We were 
*'all in," and we staggered back to Ypres throw- 
ing away everything we carried except our 
rifles. When we got to Ypres, we found that 
we had to go back to where we had started from, 
so we struggled on. On the way we met a bunch 
of Lancashire men. ' * What do you belong to T ' 
they asked us as they passed. "We are all that 
is left of a Canadian battalion," we replied. 
"Gorblimey, it's bleedin' orful," said they. 
Just as day was breaking we hit camp. The 
Quartermaster gave us a drink of rum, and the 
cooks had a feed ready, and we got our blankets 
and turned in. We slept till the afternoon, and 
then we had to answer a muster call. Two hun- 
dred and seventy-two was all that was left of 
what, three days before, had been a battalion 
one thousand strong. Tears rolled down our old 
Colonel's face as he looked at us. '*My boys I 



INTO THE JAWS OF, DEATH 239 

my boys!" was all he could say. We were only 
out twenty-four hours, and during that time we 
read our mail, wrote a few letters, and opened 
our parcels. There were parcels everywhere, 
many of them belonging to boys who had been 
either killed or wounded, and these were dis- 
tributed among- those that remained. We were 
dead-tired and we were hoping for a good long 
rest, when in marched a big bunch of reinforce- 
ments, and shortly after we received orders to 
pack up and be ready to move that night. It 
was raining when we started out, and oh ! we did 
feel rotten to have to go back to that hell-hole 
again. But the new fellows didn't know what it 
was like, and we laughed and joked with them. 
Bob Tait and I were carrying No. 10 's rations; 
and we were ' ' connecting file ' ' — that is, we kept 
in sight of the platoon behind. It was raining 
so hard that we were soon soaked to the skin, 
and we were glad when they stopped at Ypres 
that night. Bob and I missed the platoon in 
front, they went into some dugout, so we went in 
with the rear platoon. We were billeted in what 
had been an old wine cellar. The house which 
had been there before the war was blown down, 
and from the outside it looked like nothing but 



240 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

a pile of bricks. Bob and I were in a little place 
by ourselves ; we knew that it was useless to try 
and find our own platoon in the dark. We had 
nothing but a stone slab to sleep on, and it 
didn't look very inviting to stretch out there in 
our wet clothes. I was just preparing to lie 
down when Bob said, "Wait a minute, see what 
I found, ' ' and he held up a bottle of rum. Gee, 
I could have kissed him ! — we had a good drink, 
and maybe we weren 't glad that we carried the 
rations that night. We had a fine sleep in spite 
of the artillery thundering overhead. Every 
now and then a heavy German shell would land 
right on top of our sleeping-place, but it 
couldn't break through. The concussion would 
put out the candles, that was all. That night, 
the First Division of Canadians and some 
British troops made their big counter-attack; 
and took back all the ground that the Germans 
had taken in the previous nine or ten days. 

Bob and I woke up next morning and had our 
breakfast, and after awhile we wandered out 
around town. Some German prisoners were' 
coming down the road, and we stopped and 
spoke to them. One who could speak a little 
English said, ''Too much shell." They were 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 241 

very hungry ; one of them spotted a piece of bis- 
cuit beside the road. He grabbed it up and 
ate it like a dog. All at once we heard a 
shout, and turning we spied Bink and Charlie 
Pound. When they got up to us they said, 
"Where the devil have you fellows been? We 
want our rations." They seemed quite peeved 
and they hadn't worried a bit about losing us. 
It was not having their rations that bothered 
them. 

AVell, that night we went back to the same 
trenches that we had left just three nights be- 
fore, only this time we marched on the Ypres- 
Menin road. This is the worst road in the 
salient; the Germans sweep it with their ma- 
chine guns every night, and it sure is wicked. 
Of course Eust had been over it months before 
and knew all about it. He told us that the 
bullets come about a foot from the ground, and 
if a fellow gets one in the leg, he will get hit 
again before he can crawl away. We were 
nicely started down the road when all at once 
the machine guns started to crackle. I took 
one jump and landed, rifle and all, in a ditch fuU 
of water. Most of the boys came with me, but 
I couldn't help laughing at some of the rein- 



242 INTO THE JAWS OP DEATH 

forcements. They took refuge behind trees, 
just as if a little tree would stop a machine gun 
bullet. Of course we told them, but not till one 
or two of their number got hit did they realize 
their danger. The Germans were shelling the 
trenches that we were going into, and now and 
again they would send over some high-explosive 
shells and sweep our road with shrapnel, so we 
had a few more casualties. 

Well, at last we reached the trenches, and 
McMurchie and I stopped to help a fellow that 
w^as hit. By the time we got in our boys had 
relieved the 29th, who had been holding it ever 
since w^e left. Well, just as Mac and I jumped 
into the trench, we heard some one say to our 
Sergeant, '^The officer wants you to send a 
couple of men for the bombing-post on the road ; 
the two that were holding it have just been 
killed." Donnslau turned around and spied us 
making tracks up the trench. ^'Goddard and 
McMurchie, you will take charge of the bomb- 
ing-post at the end of the trench: Sergeant 
Oldershaw will show you where it is." Mac 
was ticked to death, and I followed him looking 
as happy as I could — but, say, I wasn't feeling 
a bit heroic. We went on the post and Fritzie 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 243 

shelled us there for two days, and it sure was a 
marvel that we didn't get hit. I remember, we 
were lying on the cobblestones in the middle of 
the road — the idea being to stop any Germans 
that might be sneaking down that way. Some- 
times when things got too hot the Sergeant 
would call us into the trench and let us stay 
there for awhile. While in the trench we would 
go around whistling; and he was always cooking 
up tea or something. We always burned 
candles for this, and when our supply ran out 
he went and borrowed from the officers. Noth- 
ing seemed to bother him, and he would watch 
the shells bursting overhead — big black shrap- 
nel and ' ' woolly bears. ' ' When the latter burst 
they make a noise like a ton of bricks being 
dumped, and Mac would watch them with a 
smile — once when we were sitting in the mud, 
and I suppose I was looking about as cheerful 
as a dying duck in a thunderstorm, Mac re- 
marked, ''In spite of orl 'is trials and priva- 
tions, the British Tommy remyns as cheerful as 
ever." He brought it out just like a Cockney, 
and I just had to smile. Shortly after this 
along came ''Fat." He and Bink had been up 
at the culvert, and they were supposed to be on 



244 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

their way out, but poor old Fat was so stiff 
with the cold that he couldn 't walk. We offered 
to fetch him a snort of rum, but he said he 
wouldn't take it. I suppose he had promised 
some darn girl back home, and he would die 
rather than break his word. Well, we gave him 
some hot tea, took off his socks and rubbed his 
feet; and I got him a pair of my dry socks. 
After awhile we coaxed him to eat a little, and 
we joked with him, till at last he gave a bit of a 
smile — and soon we heard his familiar *'Tee he, 
tee he!" — he had the funniest laugh I ever 
heard. Well, he stayed with us till we were 
relieved. 

A funny thing happened up the trench that 
same day. Harriot and some of the other boys 
were sitting in one of the bays of the trench 
cooking some Maconachie rations, when hang! 
right through the parapet came a shell. It went 
between Harriot and the next chap, and the 
shock must have been awful. Harriot rushed 
into the next bay, and meeting our Sergeant he 
spluttered, "Oh say, old chap, ain't I a lucky 
devil? All those fellows in the next bay are 
blown to hell, and I escaped." The Sergeant 
rushed around to find the bay empty except for 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 245 

the shell which hadn't exploded, but was repos- 
ing quietly in the bottom of the trench and Mar- 
riot had been too excited to notice. Maybe he 
didn't get chipped about it afterwards. That 
night we were relieved by the Coldstream 
Guards ; and say, Jack, they are soldiers ! They 
came in like clockwork, every man knew his 
place, and exactly where to go. They fixed 
bayonets on entering the trench and there was 
no confusion. They had taken over the trench 
almost before we knew it. 

How glad we were to be relieved no one 
knows but those who were there. We were not 
sorry to see the last of Hooge. They gave us 
about a wreck's rest and then we went back to 

our old trenches at . It was quiet there, 

and for awhile we had it pretty easy. Just 
after taking over these trenches we were treated 
to a great sight. Our aeroplanes made a gen- 
eral attack all along the British front from the 
coast to the Somme, and they burned all the 
German observation balloons. We stood and 
watched them come down in flames, and it was 
great. Mind you it meant a lot to us; while 
they were watching us there couldn't be a stir 
behind our lines but we would be treated to a 



246 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

salvo of shells. In fact, we had orders not to 
move around in the daytime. But after the 
balloons were gone we could go about with 
comparative freedom. Even one man would 
attract the attention of these German eyes. Our 
old boy, Charlie Pound, was a runner or dis- 
patch carrier between the front line and Head- 
quarters, and he often came up to see us when 
we were in the line. One day he said, ''There's 
a fat Fritzie in that balloon that I'd like to get 
my hands on; he must have a grudge against 
me, for he shells me every time I go down the 
communication trench." So Charlie was tickled 
to death when that particular balloon was 
brought down. 

Well, Jack, our next trip in was at Hill 60, 
and it was a warm spot — not artillery fire this 
time, but trench mortars. Every morning 
Fritzie would send us "sausages" for break- 
fast ; they came at the rate of one a minute. It 
wasn't that they caused so many casualties, but 
they made so much work. Every day Fritzie 
would blow up our front line and we would have 
to build it up again each night under machine 
gun fire. We took it in turns, half of us would 
be on working parties and the other half on out- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 247 

post duty. One night several of us were down 
in a cutting on a bombing-post. The cutting had 
once been the Ypres Commines railway and it 
ran across the German lines as well as through 
ours. We had strong posts there to keep the 
Fritzies back in case they took a notion to come 
over. In the daytime it was exposed to rifle 
fire. We were sitting there this night when our 
Corporal came running in and said, ''Hurry 
back to the trench, there's a show going to 
start. ' ' He had scarcely finished speaking when 
the trench mortar bombardment opened up, and 
we had barely hit the trench when a sausage 
landed on the very spot where we had been. 
The next few minutes were very exciting and 
we were kept busy dodging the sausages. We 
could easily see them coming through the dark- 
ness, for the fuse burned and left a trail of 
sparks. One would have thought they were 
rockets, if he hadn't seem them before. Then 
Fritzie opened up his artillery, and things got 
very warm indeed. We had several casualties, 
but once more our little bunch was lucky. We 
expected Fritzie would try to come over, so a 
bunch of us got out on the parapet and threw 
bombs and the others kept up a steady fire with 



248 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

their rifles. Our trencli mortars were doing 
great work throwing over six bombs for every 
one Fritzie sent, and the Germans evidently 
thought we were too wide-awake, for they failed 
to show up. 

Next day I missed fourteen days' leave, and 
gee! I did feel sore over it. I was on sentry 
duty with Ernie Rowe, and I was just in the 
act of changing my boots for a pair of rubber 
waders when along came an officer. I paid no 
special attention to him, as a sap ran under- 
neath Hill 60 and there were always engineering 
officers around. This chap stopped and passed 
a few commonplace remarks about the wetness 
of the trench, etc., and then passed on. I 
thought no more about it and was taking my 
turn, at looking through the periscope, when 
along came Captain Breedan and a bunch of 
scouts. "Did you see an officer go by here?" 
was their excited greeting. I answered, *'He 
went past about fifteen minutes ago. What 
about himi" ''He's a spy, that's all, and if 
you had caught him it would have meant four- 
teen days' leave for you," said Captain Bree- 
dan. Just my luck to miss a nice fat chance 
like that — the beggar was never caught, he 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 249 

seemed to vanisli into thin air. After he left 
me the boys kept up the hunt for a long time 
and then gave up in disgust. 

That day I left the battalion to take a course 
of instruction in the Stokes trench mortar. I 
always had a fancy for it, as it seemed to offer 
a chance at getting back at Fritzie. This sitting 
down and taking everything he had a mind to 
send over, and giving nothing in return, was not 
my idea of fighting. I hated to leave the boys, 
but I was ^'fed up" and I wanted a change. 
Bink took a machine gun course at the same 
time and we were at the same school. When we 
finished he went back to the platoon and I went 
to the Stokes gun. The first time I went in with 
the gun crew, they sent us to the old St. filoi 
craters. There was always lots of trench mor- 
tar fighting here, and we had orders to send 
over six shells for every one that came across. 
They put me on lookout; that is, to watch for 
sausages and give the boys who were working 
the gun time to get away. We hadn't been 
firing more than five minutes, and the sausages 
were coming thick and fast, but most of them 
were landing about fifty yards away, when all 
at once something hit me in the face. I turned 



250 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

around with my fists clenched, for I thought that 
some one had hit me. One of the boys looked 
at me sharply and began getting out his ban- 
dage. He said, ''You're hit," then I felt the 
blood trickling down my cheek, and after the 
boys fixed me up as well as they could I went 
to the dressing-station. One of the boys in the 
trench had been killed by the shell that I got a 
piece of; and I was out at the dressing-station 
for a day or two, and then had orders to report 
to my unit. On my w^ay back I met Rust and 
Tommy Gammon, and we sat and chatted about 
old times. "Come with me and join the Stokes 
gun," said I; ''it's lots better than the in- 
fantry." "Nothing doing," said Tommy, 
"you're a poor advertisement;" and I suppose 
I did look funny with a big bandage around my 
head. "No, we are not looking for a quick 
funeral yet awhile," said Eust. "Well, I left 
the boys and went on to my new unit. Some 
time in the next day or so Harry Foster got hit 
through the shoulder; and he went off looking 
as pleased as a dog with tw^o tails. My, how we 
envied him as he walked out smoking a ciga- 
rette ! But, poor chap, he died in London, and 
•we never heard what took him off. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 251 

Shortly after this we started off for the 
Somme, and before we went we exchanged our 
Boss rifles for Lee-Enfields. We had a great 
time going down, we rode in cattle cars part of 
the way and marched the rest. Most of the 
roads we passed over were lined with apple 
trees, and gee! they did look good. When we 
were getting near the lines we met a division of 
Australians coming out from the Somme battle- 
field, and what sights they were! They were 
covered w^ith white chalk and most of them had 
their trousers cut off at the knee. We asked 
them what it was like and they said, ''Oh, you 
won't want a rifle, all you need is a shovel to 
dig yourself a hole" — cheerful, wasn't it? 

Well, we went into reserves and for a couple 
of days we did nothing but lounge around. We 
took a walk through Albert to see the statue of 
the Madonna and the infant Jesus. It hung 
right over the road, and it is marvellous how 
long it stayed there without being hit. The 
French people used to say that when it fell the 
war would end, but it has been down some time 
and the war is not over yet. They put us on 
fatigues and working parties for a few days 
and then we were moved up to the supports. 



252 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

We were told that we were going over the top 
early next morning assisted by tanks. Now, 
tanks had not been used up to this time and 
they were the surprise of the war. W^e hadn't 
heard one word about them and we were crazy 
to know what they were like, so our officer told 
us where we would find one, and away we went 
to see it. When we got there it was covered with 
a tarpaulin, but the officer in charge took the 
sheet off and let us have a good look at it — 
and such a queer-looking monster as it was! 
It looked like a cross between an elephant 
(without his baggage) and a mud turtle. We 
bombarded the officer with questions, but he 
wouldn't answer many of them; only he said 
that nothing but a direct hit with a six-inch shell 
would penetrate its hide; and it could go 
through any hole or walk right over a house. 
It was some diabolical device all right, and we 
went back chuckling over the surprise that the 
Germans would get next day. That night we 
went in, marching in single file. It was pitch- 
dark and the Germans were shelling furiously, 
though before we left all our massed artillery 
had carried out what is known as half an hour's 
counter-battery work, the idea being to put as 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 253 

many German guns out of action as possible. 
Our gunners had most of the enemy positions 
covered, as our aeroplanes had been spotting 
them. 

Well, we went in on the night of the 14th of 
September, 1916, and as I had been wounded in 
the knee the day before I was limping along 
with the other boys when, whiz-hang! a big shell 
burst right near us. It killed several of the 
boys that were just ahead. I hadn't been able 
to bend my leg a few minutes before, but be- 
lieve me, I ducked when I saw that shell coming 
and I never thought about my knee. I was 
with the Stokes gun crew and was detailed off 
as a runner. This meant that I had to keep in 
touch with the various trench mortar crews, and 
report how things were going, to Headquarters. 
Tommy, Bink, and our other friends were with 
the battalion. Just before daybreak the Ser- 
geant came around and gave us a snort of rum. 
We were lying in the trench that we had dug 
that night out in No Man's Land. It was called 
a ''jumping off" trench. In front of us lay the 
German trench, and we were supposed to cap- 
ture it and also a sugar refinery that was located 
a little further back. Altogether our advance 



254 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

was to cover about a thousand yards. Just at 
daybreak our barrage burst on the enemy 
trenches, and over we went; we got the front- 
line trenches without much opposition, but, 
where the Fritzies did make a stand there was 
some dirty work. We were losing quite a lot of 
men with artillery fire. Eust was hit in the 
back with shrapnel, and as he half turned, a 
bullet caught him, smashing his jaw. Flare- 
pistol Bill was waving his arm to direct some of 
the boys when a bullet caught him in the head. 
But we were too busy to notice by this time, and 
leaving the wounded to the care of our stretcher 
bearers, we pushed on. We reached the second 
German trench and proceeded to lay out the 
Huns. Fat was bayoneting them as fast as he 
could, and ''tee-hee-ing" all the time. Tommy 
had a big Hun in one corner, and with his 
bayonet under his chin was trying to make him 
put his hands up. At first Fritzie didn't under- 
stand, but when at last it dawned on him his 
hands went up in a hurry, and he cried 
' * Kamerad ! " in the approved fashion. 

By this time all the Germans in sight had 
either been killed or taken prisoners, and a 
whole bunch were being herded back to our 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 255 

lines. The German guns were dropping heavies 
on the ground we had left, and as the prisoners 
went back they were caught in their own shell 
fire and a lot were killed. 

From the start the tanks had been doing great 
work, walking over machine guns and killing- 
hundreds with their own machine gun fire. The 
Germans w^ere scared stiff and absolutely de- 
moralized. One band, with more courage than 
the rest, gathered round a tank and tried to 
bomb it with hand grenades, but they met with 
no success, for the bombs either bounded off or 
exploded harmlessly against the steel sides. 
Finding their efforts useless they surrendered 
to the tank crew. While all this was going on, 
I was busy carrying messages between the gun 
crews and Headquarters. I was on the go all 
day and though the German shell fire was heavy, 
my luck was with me, and I didn't get hit once. 
Bink was dispatch runner for his company, and 
I passed him several times and he told me about 
the boys, as he was with them more than I. The 
last time I met him, he said, "Bob, Tommy's 
killed. " " Tommy ! ' ' said I, almost too stunned 
to speak. ''Yes," said he, "I was passing along 
the trench and had just jumped over a body 



256 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

when I thought the clothes looked familiar and 
I turned the body over, and there was poor 
Tommy ; he had been shot through the chest by a 
sniper. I took charge of his things, and I'll 
send them to his people when I get out again. ' ' 
After Bink left me, I tried to realize that 
Tommy was gone, but I couldn't believe that my 
chum and bedfellow was really dead. It seemed 
so hard when he had only been back from hos- 
pital a few days. Well, I had no time to sit 
down and think, things were getting too warm. 
At six o'clock that evening General Byng de- 
cided to throw in the tTiird division, who had 
been held in reserve. I watched them as they 
came over, and it was a great sight. The 42nd 
Highlanders were in the lead, and they came in 
long lines with their bayonets fixed. The Ger- 
mans spotted them as soon as they came over 
the ridge and immediately turned their guns on 
them, but they came on steadily in spite of their 
losses, over the top of us, and into the Hun 
lines. They cleaned up what was left of the 
Germans and established themselves firmly in 
Courcelette. The French Canadians had been 
holding Courcelette all day, but had lost 
heavily. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 257 

Well, that night we went back in reserve ; we 
were all in, and we staggered along till we got 
got to the brick fields at Albert. There we had 
our bivouacs and we turned in. Next morning 
I went over to see Bink, and we felt pretty blue. 
Tommy, Flare-pistol Bill, Barbed-wire Pete, 
and Lieutenant Oldershaw were all killed, and 
half a dozen others, including Eust, were 
wounded. Poor old 10th Platoon, they were 
going fast ! Bink, Fat, McMurchie, Erne Rowe 
and I were the only ones left of my old pals, 
and the ones who were gone were the ones I had 
chummed w^ith most. Bink and I had a lot of 
sad letters to write to the boys' relatives that 
day. 

Shortly after this we were taken back of the 
line a few miles and reorganized, and in a few 
days we were back in the trenches again. The 
battalion went in at Courcelette a night or two 
before me, and such a place it was. The Ger- 
man artillery had made it a veritable hell-hole. 
What was once a pretty town was now a pile of 
bricks with a sunken road running through it, 
and leading down to a cemetery. When I went 
in with a Stokes gun, the 28th held the grave- 
yard; such a time as we had getting in. We 



258 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

were shelled all the way, and the nearer we 
came to Courcelette the hotter it got. Finally 
we reached that sunken road and it was strewn 
with dead bodies, our lads and Germans. We 
started to set up our gun in the bank beside the 
road, and how we did dig. The shells were 
tearing up everything around us, and Tommy 
Lowe and I dug like demons. Our crew had 
three casualties almost immediately, two 
wounded and one killed. We got our gun set 
up, but as we were short of ammunition we had 
to wait for a counter-attack before we were 
allowed to fire. The 31st made an attack that 
morning, but got hung up on the German wire 
entanglements and lost heavily. When daylight 
came things were still hot. Sergeant Faulkner, 
who had just come back, after recovering from 
his second wound, for his final one that morn- 
ing. "Carry on," he said; "I'm done." A 
little bunch of the 28th were holding the ceme- 
tery and expecting a counter-attack any mo- 
ment. McMurchie was there in his glory. "Let 
the devils come," said he; "I'll chase them back 
with me entrinchin ' tool handle. ' ' The wounded 
were lying around everywhere, and Tommy 
Lowe, Danny Dugan and I carried them up that 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 259 

road to the dressing-station. All forenoon the 
German snipers were on our track, and we had 
to hug the bank all the way up. The shell fire 
had died down, though our artillery was still 
giving the Germans a heavy shelling. When 
Tommy and I got tired we lay down in a shell 
hole, but the sun was hot and the odour from 
the dead bodies was so awful we had to move on. 
That night the shelling was wicked, and we 
lost heavily. Our boys came along with a few 
prisoners, and as they couldn't get through the 
shell fire we allowed them to share our hole. 
They went out next morning, and the Huns 
wanted to shake hands with us for being so kind 
to them, but I gave one the toe of my boot 
and pointed the way out. Our artillery had 
made things unbearable for the Germans by this 
time, and they pulled out, leaving only a few 
snipers to harass us. McMurchie crawled over 
with a bomb and brought two of the snipers back 
with him. It was a funny sight to see them 
going up the road; those big six footers walk- 
ing ahead of little Mac; the latter was barely 
five feet; but he marched proudly along, keep- 
ing his bayonet mighty close to them. The same 
day our cavalry went over, but they ran into a 



260 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

nest of machine gnns and their little bunch 
was cut to pieces; it was dreadful to see the 
poor frightened horses running in all direc- 
tions. 

That night we were relieved and we went to a 
place called Sauage Valley. Here I said ' ' Good- 
bye" to Bink; he was starting back to Blighty 
to get his commission. I went down the road 
with him and watched him till he was out of 
sight, and then I'm not ashamed to say that I 
went off into a shell hole by myself and cried 
like a kid. He was the last one of the old boys 
that had signed up with me, and now he was 
gone. It's hard enough to lose friends at home, 
but in the Army a fellow's pals are all that make 
life bearable. I never saw Bink again — he 
joined the fljang corps and came down in 
Flanders with five bullets through his head. 
Well, after Binkie went, I didn't care a hang 
what happened. We put in another twenty-four 
hours in the trenches and then we started on 
our long march up north. We reached our des- 
tination and went into the trenches at S ► 

We relieved the English troops, and were there 
right up till Christmas. It was very quiet ex- 
cept for a few big raids that we pulled off ; but 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 261 

the mud was awful. We waded through mud 
and water up past our waists going into the 
front lines, and once there we had to keep 
pumping all the time. Each day we would have 
a trench mortar scrap from two o'clock till five, 
and we would blow each other's trenches to 
pieces. I was in the trenches on Christmas day 
and I had two bottles of champagne that we had 
managed to smuggle in. I was in charge of the 
Stokes gun crew at that time, and I sent Tommy 
down to Headquarters for orders. As he left I 
said, "Now, Tommy, if you bring me my leave 
check, I'll give you five francs." After awhile 
Tommy came back and said, "Bob, hand out 
those five francs, here's your leave check." I 
threw him the money, and away I beat it along 
the trench as fast as my feet could carry me. 
It would have taken a "whiz-bang" to catch up 
to me that day. It was Xmas afternoon when 
I left the trenches, and the next day at 5 o'clock, 
still muddy and carrying my pack and rifle, I 
stumbled off the train at Victoria Station, and 
in twenty minutes I was at home, telling my old 
dad the tale that I have told you. 

Of those ten short wild days in London I 
won't speak, but it was like getting to heaven 



262 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

after being in hell. They slipped by much too 
quickly, and then the time came for me to go 
back. So one morning I landed up at Victoria 
Station and caught what is known as ''the train 
of tears." The boys are always very silent 
going back — there is never any cheering. After 
you have had eighteen months of hell, war is not 
the grand romantic thing it seemed at first. 
The boys feel as if they were on their way to a 
funeral, and the worst of it is, it may be their 
own. But once in France, every one seems to 
brighten up again, and the game goes on as 
before. Memories of home die away, and you 
become simply an atom in the big war machine. 
It took me some time to get settled down again, 
and they kept moving us in and out of the 
trenches. It was terribly wet and cold, and we 
would sit for days all huddled around our old 
charcoal brazier in a dugout forty feet under 
ground. Of course a dugout at this depth was 
comparatively safe. Only once did Fritz blow 
in the entrance wdth a trench mortar, and then 
we had to dig ourselves out. After about two 
weeks longer the whole division went out on 
rest. At least, they called it ''rest," but our 
time was kept so filled up with drilling, inspec- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 263 

tions, etc., that we got "fed up" and wished we 
were back in the lines. We had about a month 
of this, and then we went in and took over our 
new positions at the Labyrinth to the right of 
the Ridge. The Labyrinth was a perfect maze 
of trenches, built by the Germans, and taken 
from them by the French, at the time of the 
British attack at Loos. The gun crew we re- 
lieved was carried out in sandbags, having been 
blown to pieces by a premature shell — that is, a 
shell exploding in the gun. This made us pretty 
nervous, and we didn't fire any more till all our 
stock of ammunition had been inspected. After 
our second trip in on this line, we went out and 
commenced our training for the Battle of Vimy 
Eidge. We were taken back to a piece of 
country that was much like the district we would 
have to fight on. It was all blocked off with 
different-coloured tapes representing towns, 
trenches, and various other landmarks, and for 
two weeks we had to go over this ground, in the 
time and manner of a real attack. I, being a 
Stokes gunner, had to go with my gun and crew, 
and we had four guns behind each battalion. 
Our work was to set up our gun as quickly as 
possible and drop bombs on any machine gun 



264 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

that happened to be holding up the infantry. 
The infantry went over in waves — one wave 
would take a trench and hold it till the next 
wave went over their heads, and the next wave 
went over them again, and so on. After a 
couple of weeks of this we went into the 
trenches at the spot from which our advance 
would start ; this was to make us familiar with 
the ground. We spent seven days here, and dur- 
ing this time our guns were put into position in 
pits, in No Man's Land. These pits were cov- 
ered ^vith wire netting woven in and out with 
grass to hide us from the observation balloons. 
Our artillery were keeping up a ceaseless bom- 
bardment of the enemy's lines, destroying and 
obliterating the German trenches. At the same 
time our long-distance guns were firing night 
and day on all roads, towns, and ammunition 
dumps that lay near the enemy's lines, while our 
aeroplanes were over the Germans all the time. 
But our aircraft was having hard luck, for the 
Huns had just brought out a new lot of planes 
and these were lighter and faster than ours. It 
was heart-breaking to see our air men being shot 
down. I have seen six or seven of our planes 
come down in one day. Up to this time our 



\ 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 265 

planes had reigned supreme, and the hostile air- 
men scarcely dared to show themselves; and 
even now the Hun's triumph was short-lived. 
Our Coloned insisted that the newest planes be 
brought over, and when they came we had the 
satisfaction of seeing the Huns cleaned up. 
Well, after a week in the trenches we were taken 
out and given a real rest. We were allowed to 
lie around pretty much all the time, while the 
boys in the trenches kept the Germans on the 
jump. Every night they would go over and 
destroy the enemy's dugouts and bring back a 
bunch of prisoners; from these prisoners they 
got a lot of valuable information. 

All this time the roads leading to our lines 
were packed night and day with men, trans- 
ports, guns, ammunition, limbers, and every- 
thing that is needed for a big charge. Our eight- 
een-pound guns were in long lines, wheel to 
wheel. Behind them were long lines of heavier 
guns and back of these a line of long range 
naval guns. These last fired six- and twelve- 
inch shells to a distance of fifteen miles at tar- 
gets given them by aeroplanes. The enemy 
artillery shelled our roads a little, but whenever 
they started, our guns would redouble their ef- 



266 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

forts and the ground was shaking with their 
roar day and night. 

The evening before the big attack our artil- 
lery carried out counter-battery work, destroy- 
ing as many as possible of the enemy's guns. 
Just at dusk we fell in line and began our march 
to the trenches. We passed through St. Eloi 
(not the one in Belgium) and the French people 
looked at us pityingly. They didn't think it 
possible for us to capture Vimy Ridge, where 
the French troops had lost thousands in a vain 
attempt the year before. Our artillery fire 
had died down and the night was quiet when we 
marched into our assembly trenches at Neuville 
St. Vaast. The Stokes gun that I was with 
and one other' were detailed to go over with the 
last wave of the 27th Battalion. That meant 
that we would have to go the farthest. Every- 
thing was quiet, and Tommy and I lay do^vn in 
the trench and covered ourselves with our 
water-proof sheets and went to sleep. We slept 
till the officer came along with our rum. Then 
we watched the front line, and our watches ; all 
at once, with a roar, our artillery burst forth. 
It is impossible to describe the sound, the earth 
shook with it, and it was like a thousand thun- 



INTO THE JAWS OP DEATH 267 

derclaps, continually rolling, and for miles 
along the enemy's trenches a sheet of flame was 
dropping as our liquid-fire shells fell in a cease- 
less rain. For awhile the Germans shot their 
S.O.S. flares, but these soon died down. 

The German artillery was slow in retaliation, 
and before they got properly started our first 
brigade had taken the first line of trenches, and 
our fifth brigade was over the top of then^ and 
pressing forward. They followed our barrage 
as it advanced so many yards at a time, de- 
stroying all opposition. Soon the 4th and 5th 
Brigades had attained their objectives with few 
casualties and our officer told us to get ready, 
so the ' ' Iron Sixth ' ' started to move. When the 
first three battalions had gone, the 27th went 
over, and we jumped out, shouldering our guns 
and advancing in file. We hadn't gone more 
than a couple of hundred yards when gas shells 
began to come. On went our masks, but hardly 
in time — we got a couple of whiffs. Two of the 
boys had to go back to the dressing-station, but 
the rest of us had to go on. We were feeling 
mighty sick but when we got to where the air 
was clear, we took off our gas helmets and we 
felt a little better. We soon forgot our ills in 



268 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

the excitement of the charge, as we went on over 
what had been the German front line, but now 
was manned by our men. The pioneers were 
already pushing forward a light railway, and 
our aeroplanes were fighting overhead. By the 
way, the Eoyal Naval triplanes had been sent 
over 'specially for this work, and they did great 
execution among the enemy planes. We pressed 
on till we caught up with our barrage. The 
German shell fire was very erratic, the guns 
seemed to be firing anywhere ; on our right and 
left stretched long lines of smoke as the British 
advanced, but our flanks were not coming up 
fast enough, and we had to wait ; meanwhile our 
barrage played on a wide belt of barbed wire 
that was just in front of us. Some of our men 
got too close to the barrage and were hit by our 
own shells. 

At last the barrage lifted, and the 27th and 
28th went through the belt of wire, cutting with 
the attachments on their rifles, any strands that 
our artillery had failed to sever. A machine 
gun commenced firing at us, so down our crew 
went into a shell hole and up went our gun and 
a few rounds silenced that machine gun; then 
forward again with the 27th. We struck a 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 269 

trench and worked our way down, for this was 
our objective. On the way we came to a large 
dugout, and it was full of Germans. As soon as 
we appeared at the entrance they started to 
holler, and one man tried to get out the other 
entrance, so our Sergeant shot him. We took 
the rest of them prisoners (about twenty alto- 
gether, officers and men) and we lined them up 
and went through their pockets. We took away 
their revolvers, badges, photos, and all sorts of 
things — in fact, we stripped them of everything 
but their lives and a few clothes and sent them 
back to our lines. 

We set up our gun in the trench and waited 
for a counter-attack. While we were waiting 
we regaled ourselves on the good things we had 
found in the dugout; black bread, bottles of 
wine, and cigars. Tommy and I had to stay out 
on the gun, and pretty soon the German heavies 
began to shell the trench, and we had to dig 
ourselves in to protect us from the shrapnel. 
To make things more comfortable, it commenced 
to rain and all that night it poured. We were 
right on the crest of the Eidge and a number 
of the boys were hit carrying messages back to 
Headquarters. When morning came we found 



270 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

that our position overlooked miles of the 
enemy's country. We could look down on green 
fields and little villages, and close to the bottom 
of the hill lay the railway and the little town 
of Tarbus. 

The boys had turned the German guns 
around and were firing at the retreating Huns. 
Some of the guns we had captured were in big 
concrete emplacements with six feet of concrete 
and steel on top of them. They were still hot 
from firing when our boys took them and our 
crews with them. The Germans gave up very 
easily, and I don't wonder, for our artillery fire 
had demoralized them. One of our men had a 
German belt, and on the buckle were the words 
''Gott mit Uns" or "God with Us," but they 
must have a different God from ours if they 
expect help from Him after the deeds they have 
done. 

That night, after Tommy and I had taken our 
turn on the gun, we went down into the dugout 
and made some tea. Tommy lay down on the 
floor, but the only space I could find was on a 
bench beside a dead German; but I slept just 
as soundly as I would have in a feather bed. 
The next day about noon our officer came and 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 271 

said, ''Well, boys, we've got to go over again, 
and a dirty job we are in for too." Then he 
told us that at three o 'clock we had to be down 
and have our guns set to fire on a tower in 
Farbus where a number of snipers were located. 
We had to go in advance of our outposts and 
stay there till our boys were ready to attack. 
About two o 'clock we started out — our gun crew 
and a party carrying bags of ammunition. 
Little Eobbie, a boy who had joined up with 
me at Moose Jaw, turned to me and said, "Well, 
Bob, this is where I get mine, and I hope I'll get 
it right through the bean — ^lif e 's no pleasure to 
me." "Aw, cheer up," said I; "you may get 
a nice Blighty. " " No, ' ' said he ; "I belong to 
a bunch that get it good and hard when it comes 
at all." Poor Robbie!— he had lost all of his 
chums at Hooge, and he seemed to know that his 
time had come. He got separated from us when 
we were going down the hill, and he went to 
one of our other guns. They told him where we 
were, and he started to walk across the open 
and he got shot right through the head. Mean- 
while we had sneaked forward, taking advan- 
tage of a little flurry of snow, and we got as 
close to Farbus as we dared to go. We set up 



272 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

our gxms and at the appointed time opened fire. 
The 27th had started down, behind us, but the 
Germans saw them and opened up, and they 
must have had the place packed with machine 
guns, for a stream of lead swept over our heads. 
The attacking party were almost wiped out; 
our ofiQcer had crawled up ahead and was sig- 
nalling us the range and how many rounds to 
fire. Tommy and I were lying flat and working 
the gun. The officer saw that the attack was a 
failure, and he came back to us and said, "Well, 
boys, we got down here — now the thing is to get 
back. We '11 take our time and make use of all 
the cover we can find." So, shouldering our 
gun, away we went, the officer leading. We 
started to climb the Ridge, and we were just 
coming through a churchyard when rat-a-tat- 
tat! a machine gun spoke to us from the town 
we had left. The Corporal jumped and fell, and 
when we reached him he said, "Boys, I've got 
it." We bound him up as best we could, and 
Tommy went in search of a stretcher to carry 
him out on. But while he was gone, we tried to 
get the Corporal to walk a little way. He was 
shot through the groin, and he wouldn't move 
no matter how we coaxed. So the Sergeant and 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 273 

I got rough, and said, ''Now, look here, you've 
got to walk; if you don't, we will go away and 
leave you here to die. ' ' This brought him to his 
senses, and leaning on our shoulders he went 
forward slowly till we found the road, and then 
the going was easier up to the top of the Ridge. 
When we reached the top the shelling was awful, 
so we put the Corporal on a concrete gun pit, 
and when Tommy and the stretcher arrived we 
carried him back to Thelner. 

That night we were relieved, and utterly ex- 
hausted we stumbled our way back through the 
shell fire to Neuville St. Vaast. Once there, we 
got some hot grub from our cooks and a big 
drink of rum, and we turned into our dugouts, 
but now that the strain was over I couldn't sleep 
and I shook like a leaf. Tommy was beside me 
and he said, ''Quit your shaking, you son of a 
gun; I do my shaking in the line, but you do 
yours after we get out." Next day we went 
still farther back and we were allowed a week's 
complete rest, and in the meantime our line was 
advanced to Arleaux. 

When we were returned to the lines we were 
told that it was over the top again for us ; the 
Canadians were going to make an attack on 



274 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

Fresnoy. The town of Fresnoy was only a 
sliort distance from Arleaux, which we now 
held, and about one mile from Vimy Ridge. The 
ridge it was on made it important as an observa- 
tion post, and through the town ran a line of 
trenches known as the Oppy switch of the Hin- 
denburg Line. To the 1st Division was given 
the task of taking the towTi, while the 2nd Divi- 
sion attacked the trenches on the left. 

We went in during the night when it was 
fairly quiet, and we took over the gun positions, 
from a trench mortar crew. Just before day- 
break our barrage burst on the enemy and away 
we went and got in close to their wire entangle- 
ments. As soon as the barrage lifted, through 
the wire we went and into the trench, but instead 
of a wave of infantry being in with us they got 
hung up on the wire and lost heavily; so half a 
dozen of our crew were in the trench by our- 
selves. The Germans were only too willing to 
be made prisoners at first, and threw away their 
rifles, but when they saw that no one else was 
coming they got fresh and started to bomb us. 
Our Corporal was shooting them as fast as he 
could mth his revolver and we dropped our gun 
and pelted them with their own bombs. We 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 275 

managed to chase them back along the trench 
and the 1st Division sent us help, so we blocked 
the trench and held over part of it. Our boys 
on the left had also gotten in and cleared out 
a section of the trench, so it was a sandwich 
with the Germans for our meat. We were re- 
lieved that night, but only stayed out long 
enough to get a rest and some food, and next 
night we were back again. The shelling was 
dreadful when we were going in and we had to 
keep on the run all the way up — and carrying 
guns, that was no joke. Every road we crossed 
had a heavy barrage put on it and we had a 
lively time. We had almost reached the front 
lines when one of our officers got hit in the face 
by a piece of ' ' whiz-bang. ' ' Well, finally we got 
in and we spent all the next day sniping Ger- 
mans as they tried to run across the open to get 
to another trench. One Hun got lost and walked 
almost up to our section of the trench before he 
found out his mistake ; he tried to go back, but 
a bullet chipped by him and he came in and gave 
himself up. Tommy and I were on lookout 
when we were surprised to see a German crawl 
to the edge of our trench. I was just going to 
fire, when Tommy said, "Wait a minute," and 



276 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

he danced around and stuck his bayonet up 
under the German's nose; up went the hands, 
and we hauled the wretch in. He was wounded 
in the leg; we gave him a drink though water 
was very scarce, we only had one bottle among 
three ; then we gave him a kick and sent him on 
his way rejoicing back to his lines. 

The third night we were relieved — shelling 
had been heavy all day and all the approaches to 
our lines were blotted out — the barrages had 
made them impassable during the day. I was 
sent out to act as guide to the relieving party, 
and I found them sitting down under a heavy 
barrage. They had been shelled all the way 
from Vimy and were so ''all in" that they 
didn't care what happened. After much per- 
suasion I got them to come along, and finally 
w^e reached our line, and we went out leaving 
them in possession of the trench. We were 
scarcely out of sight when the Germans counter- 
attacked, and the crew we had just left were 
wiped out. Three times the German penetrated 
parts of the line and three times they were 
thrown back. Our casualty list was very heavy. 
Fresnoy fell into their hands again in spite of 
the fierce resistance our boys put up. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 277 

In the meantime we got through the barrage 
all right, though we lost some of our men. A 
shell dropped just ahead and blew the man in 
front of me to pieces; I got his body all over 
me and I was blood and dirt from head to foot. 
But we kept on going till some one ran out of 
the darkness shouting, * ' You cannot get past the 
railway, Fritzie has been throwing over gas 
shells and the gas is thick in the valley, all our 
artillery is gassed." We put on our masks, but 
we couldn't see through them very well and we 
decided to hang out where we were till morning, 
but Fritzie began sending us some high-explo- 
sive shrapnel and we thought we would rather 
take our chance with the gas, so we stuck our 
gas tubes in our mouths, grabbed our noses, and 
away we went. The Germans were flinging 
heavy shells at our silent artillery, but we got 
past all right and we stumbled on till we came 
to our camp at Neuville St. Vaast. One or two 
had been gassed a little and had to go to a dress- 
ing-station, but the rest of us had a good feed 
and we went right to sleep — we sure were ''all 
in. ' ' We only did one more trip into that part 
of the line, and then it was very quiet, so to our 



278 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

great joy we were taken out and given a month 's 
rest. 

The next time we went in was at Lens, and 
here we relieved some British troops that had 
been having an awful time. They were holding 
a place on the outskirts of Lens known as Cite 
Ste. Elisabeth, and they told us some awful tales 
of what had been taking place. The British had 
attacked Lens, but after being practically suc- 
cessful the attacking party were not able to 
hold what they had gained. The Germans sur- 
rounded the town, and those that were not killed 
were taken prisoner. Now, Lens was merely a 
mass of ruined houses, but the Huns had forti- 
fied every house and were firmly intrenched. 
The troops we relieved were holding what had 
been German territory, and they had made for- 
tresses out of the houses that were still stand- 
ing. They had lost half their men, and it was 
marvellous what they had done and the way 
they had held out. 

The gun position that our two Stokes guns 
took over was in a big house, or rather behind 
it. The basement of this house was propped up 
with mine timbers and steel props ; this was to 
sustain the eight feet of concrete with rein- 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 279 

forced steel that had been laid on the first floor. 
It made a wonderful protection for our guns 
and also for ourselves. The basement contained 
box spring-beds and real mirrors, and we felt 
that we were very swell indeed. We kept most 
of our ammunition in the house, where it was 
always dry, and the way we hammered old Fritz 
wasn't slow. We fired from two to three hun- 
dred rounds daily and our carrying parties 
cussed us for firing so much. When not on the 
guns we spent our time in the basement telling 
yarns and playing cards. We had a dandy 
officer; he had only just come out, but he was as 
keen as mustard. He insisted on living with us, 
and when we were firing he was right on the 
spot. Of course with our gun going so much of 
the time Fritzie came back with everything he 
had, but he never could find out where we really 
were. The greatest drawback to our new posi- 
tion was the lack of water. Before the Germans 
retired they had filled all the wells with barbed 
wire. The Germans tried to gas us out, and 
sometimes they would pelt us with gas shells; 
all night long we had to sleep with our gas 
masks on. On the whole, our position here was 
much better than what we were used to, and we 



280 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

thoroughly enjoyed it, but after we had been 
here for a few days we were taken out on rest 
and then sent to another place. 

This time we went in at Liever, and our posi- 
tions here were hellish. I don't know how we 
lived through it; we were there four days, and 
in that time our guns were either blown up or 
buried at least twice a day. One night Tommy 
and I were lying in a hole that we had dug right 
beside our gun, and without letting us know, our 
fellows in the trenches sent over a cloud of gas. 
The Germans always bombarded where gas was 
sent over, and this was no exception to the rule. 
They started at once. Tommy and I were lying 
in the most exposed part of the trench and 
Tommy was snoring, when with a crash the 
shells began bursting over us. I wakened 
Tommy, for one gets so that he sleeps through 
everything, and we lay there wondering what 
would happen next. Suddenly, bang! a shell hit 
the side of the hole we were in and filled the 
hole with smoke and covered us with dirt. I 
said, ''Come on, Tommy, let's go down the 
trench a bit where it isn't so blamed hot." 
*'Naw," says Tommy, ''it's a long chance on 
him hitting us again." The words were hardly 



INTO THE JAWS OP DEATH 281 

out of his mouth, when crash came another shell 
and it buried us in dir.t this time. We were just 
scrambling out and Tommy was ahead, when 
bang! another shell landed right in front of us. 
Tommy went still and I grabbed him. ' * Tommy, 
Tommy, have they got you, kid ? " No answer, 
and I shook him again ; he squirmed and started 
to swear, and I knew that he was all right. We 
scrambled out and were beating it down the 
trench when an officer came out of a dugout and 
asked us what was the matter. We told him 
and he said, **What size were the shells that 
came over?" ''Huh," said Tommy, ''they was 
comin' too damned fast for me to measure 
*em. ' ' The officer grinned, and we went on. At 
the end of four days we were relieved and sent 
back on rest. 

After a few days they sent us back to Lens, 
and there was something doing every minute 
there this time. Our artillery was steadily bom- 
barding the enemy's lines, and our boys were 
putting on raids almost every night. When a 
raid was being made our guns would throw 
bombs on either side of the sector attacked to 
prevent reinforcements coming up from the 
sides, then our artillery would put up a barrage 



282 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

behind the front line to keep back help from the 
supports, thus hemming them in on three sides 
with shell fire while our infantry attacked from 
the front. A great many prisoners were taken 
in this way, but our losses were very light. Not 
long after this, on August the 18th, the 1st 
Division of Canadians made their big attack on 
Hill 70. At the same time our boys made an 
attack on the outskirts of Lens. The attack was 
a complete success, though afterwards the Ger- 
mans made five successive counter-attacks and 
our losses were heavy. The slaughter in these 
counter-attacks was awful. I was in the reserve 
trenches at the time watching the prisoners and 
the wounded streaming past. Half of our 
Stokes gun battery was in reserve, and the other 
half in the firing-line. About noon the day after 
the first attack was made, word came out that 
one of our crew had caught it and asking for 
help and stretchers to carry out the wounded. 
So we made our way in through a perfect in- 
ferno and we found the crew — an officer and six 
men — all lying wounded in a dugout. We got 
busy and carried them out, and poor beggars, 
they got some awful bumps as we stumbled 
along through the darkness, over dead bodies 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 283 

and through shell holes. We had just passed 
safely through the barrage when gas shells came 
over and we had to put masks on the wounded 
as well as on ourselves. We got them all to the 
dressing-station, but one of the boys died just 
after we got them in. Poor Eoy Taylor — he 
was marked for leave the next day. 

The following night we went in again with 
our guns and our boys were billed for another 
attack. The gun I had charge of was support- 
ing the 29th Battalion, while behind us in the 
trenches lay the 28th. My orders were to open 
fire at the same time that the artillery did, 
about 4 A.M., and my job was to blow out a 
blocked trench that led up to the German lines. 
This was to enable our boys to advance without 
losing many men. After doing this I was to 
keep on firing well in advance of our troops till 
I reached the limit of my range, and then go up 
the trench and place the gun in a spot that would 
cover a point from which a counter-attack might 
be expected. These were my orders, and I was 
given five men to help manage the gun. The 
Stokes gun will fire one hundred twelve-pound 
shells in three minutes, if no time is lost with 
misfires. It takes two men to work the gun and 



284 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

one to hand up ammunition. I sent three men 
down the trench to be ready in ease of need and 
the other two helped me. Exactly on the dot 
the artillery and our gun opened up, and for five 
minutes there was just the banging and flashing 
of explosives all around. The Germans opened 
up their artillery and attacked at the same 
minute that our boys went over — and it was a 
real hell. Of course I couldn't see what was 
going on — around us there was nothing but 
explosions and smoke. My three spare men 
were hit, but so far we had escaped. Some Ger- 
mans were behind us, having worked their way 
around from the left, but we didn't know it. 
Finally one of the boys said, "Just five more 
shells, Bobby," so I said, "All right, we'll save 
them, come along, and we'll pick out a new place 
for our gun." So, away we stumbled up the 
trench, half blinded by smoke and the concus- 
sion of the exploding shells. As we went on in 
the trench leading to the German lines I began 
to wonder what had happened — dead Germans 
were lying in heaps — ^but we kept on, thinking 
that our attacking party were away ahead, 
when all at once we ran into a bunch of 
"square-heads." They were on the outside of 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 285 

the trench as well as the inside, and then 
started the damnedest scrap I was ever in. Two 
of the boys were armed with rifle and bayonet, 
and I had a revolver. We shot those Fritzies 
just as fast as they stood up, and then they lay 
down and threw hand grenades at us. How we 
killed all those in the trench I don 't know, things 
are hazy in my mind. Faces came and went, 
and it's like a horrible dream. The old fellow 
beside me gave a yell and dropped, hit in the 
back by a piece of one of the exploding gre- 
nades. I was out of ammunition and I flung my 
revolver at the nearest Fritzie, and thinks I, 

''It's all up now, and I don't care a d 

anyway." I tried to drag the old man into a 
dugout and I got him on the stairs, but he 
looked so bad that I laid him down and 
started cutting away at his tunic to find the 
wound. The Germans that were left started 
firing bombs at me, but they went over my 
head and down the stairs bursting on a pile 
of wounded below. All at once, one hit the roof 
of the dugout and dropped at my feet. It ex- 
ploded and it was just as if some one had 
thrown a bucket of boiling water all over my 
legs. I put down my hand and my leg was full 



286 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

of holes and the blood was literally streaming 
from it. The pain was awful and I couldn't 
stand up any longer. I was half fainting, and 
I dropped into the dugout on a pile of writhing 
bodies. But I still had sense enough to know 
that if I stayed there the next bomb that came 
down those stairs would land on my back, so I 
managed to scramble off, and then I crawled 
along the dugout floor till I came to a table. 
It was black dark and I had to feel my way 
along. I pulled myself up on the table and 
started to bind up my leg, when along came one 
of our crew, Benson; he had bayoneted the man 
who was throwing bombs, and had come into the 
dugout by the other entrance. He helped me 
fix myself up and along came one of our own 
stretcher bearers. We called to him and he told 
us that the old 28th had come to our rescue 
and had chased the Germans out of the trench. 
The stretcher bearer was working like a hero, 
sorting out the wounded, binding them up and 
getting them ready to move. My old man had 
managed to get downstairs and he was calling, 
''Bobbie, Bobbie, come and help me." I told 
him that I couldn't go, for I was hit myself. 
The stretcher bearer lit some candles and we 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 287 

had a look around ; one entrance of the dugout 
was blocked and the dead were lying every- 
where. Benson did his best to make me com- 
fortable, but the bone was sticking out through 
the side of my leg and it was mighty sore. 
After awhile an officer of the 28th came down 
and said, ''Sorry, boys, but we've got to drop 
back; the Germans are attacking heavily, and 
we are not strong enough to hold them here, we 
will have to leave you, but if you are here we 
will come back for you tomorrow morning." 
We groaned. I tried my best to get up the 
stairs, but after two or three attempts I had to 
give up. Benson had to go to help the boys 
hold the Fritzies in the next line of trenches. 
After awhile along came the Germans — the 
stretcher bearer saw them as they passed the 
entrance. In the dugout we all kept as still as 
we could. There were thirty of us, all badly 
wounded, and caught like rats in a trap. 

The Germans did not bother coming down, 
but they threw bombs in every time they passed. 
These bombs killed a number of the boys and 
the smoke and gas almost choked the rest of us. 
This continued all day and all night. An Irish- 
man with a leg and an arm broken was lying at 



288 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

my side; and he just lay there grinding his 
teeth and cursing the Germans. Just after day- 
break we heard a lot of bombs bursting in the 
trench above and we wondered what was hap- 
pening. Soon we heard a footstep on the stairs 
and some one shouted, ''Who's down there?'* 
and one of our sergeants appeared with a bomb 
in his hand. ''It's us!" we cried, and perhaps 
we were not glad to see him! He said, "All 
right, boys, we '11 get some stretcher bearers up 
and have you taken out as soon as possible." 
In about half an hour along came a carrying 
party; they took the Irishman up just ahead of 
me, and I could hear him grinding his teeth. 
Gee! but that fellow had grit. We had just 
gone a little way down the trench when hing! 
one of the stretcher bearers got a bullet through 
the top of his tin hat. It didn't touch, but it 
came too close for comfort and they kept pretty 
low after that. As they carried me along some 
one passed me on the run going out, and I called 
"Hello, Benson." He turned around and, gee! 
he was glad to see me alive. He grabbed one 
end of the stretcher and insisted on helping to 
carry me out, so away we went to the advance 
dressing-station. I tad to wait my turn, for 



INTO THE JAWS OF. DEATH 289 

there was a long line of wounded. ' * Well, Bob- 
bie, what shall I do?" asked Benson. '*Go 
back and report to Headquarters," I said. 
**And, by the way, Benson, what happened to 
our gun r ' * ' Oh, ' ' said he, ' * a shell landed right 
on top of it and blew it to smithereens." Not 
long after old Tucker came along and said, ' * Got 
a Blighty, Bob ? " ' * Yes, " says I, " and I '11 be 
lucky if I don't lose my leg." By this time my 
leg was swollen up like a balloon, and I was 
afraid of blood poisoning. When at last my 
turn came at this dressing-station they just gave 
me an injection to prevent poisoning and sent 
me on. After much jolting in a motor ambu- 
lance I arrived at a big clearing-station and had 
my leg properly dressed. Then they put me 
aboard a Red Cross train, and I was lying there 
feeling pretty tough when a sweet voice said, 
** Would you like a cigarette?" I opened my 
eyes, and there stood a Red Cross nurse. Say, 
she looked like an angel to me. I guess the 
other boys felt the same, for their eyes followed 
her wherever she went. Just before daylight 
we arrived at the little town of Camiens, and we 
were tenderly carried off the train and put into 
motor ambulances. The road was very rough, 



290 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

and at every jolt we would all swear. Then, to 
our amazement, a lady's voice said, **I'm sorry, 
boys, but the road is rough." I looked up and 
there, driving the ambulance, was a young lady. 
Gee ! we did feel ashamed. Finally we arrived 
at our destination and were carried into a big 
base hospital. It was an American hospital, 
and it sure seemed like heaven after what we 
had been through. They soon fixed up my leg, 
and then I had nothing to do but watch the 
nurses. They were the most efiScient doctors 
and nurses I ever saw ; everything in the hospi- 
tal moved like clockwork. After a few days 
they set my leg and put it in splints and then 
I waited for my ticket to Blighty; but my 
troubles were not quite over. One day the Ger- 
man aeroplanes came over, and next night they 
came again and bombed our hospital. Oh, 
it was awful — worse than the front lines. They 
dropped six bombs, killed a doctor, wounded 
some nurses, and killed and wounded many of 
the boys. I lay in bed hanging onto the pillows 
and listened to the crash of the bombs, and the 
screams of the wounded. I hope I will never 
hear the like again. One of the bombs came 
through the tent I was in, but didn't explode. 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 291 

The minute the Huns were gone the doctors 
and nurses were around looking after the boys, 
soothing those who were shaken and attending 
the ones who were injured. There was no 
excuse for the bombing of this hospital ; it was 
plainly marked with the Red Cross, and no one 
could mistake it for an ammunition dump. A 
few days more, and I was shipped across to dear 
old Blighty and three months of heaven. It was 
worth all I had gone through to be treated as we 
all were over there. I was in several hospitals, 
and it was the same in all — they were just as 
good to us as our own people could have been. 
The X-ray showed fifty-six pieces of tin in my 
leg. As the doctor remarked, "You are a regu- 
lar mine, and I think we will let you take your 
fifty pieces back to Canada ; it would destroy too 
many nerves to dig them out, and in time they 
will work up to the surface. ' ' 

So, here I am back in Canada, a civilian with 
fifty-six pieces of iron in my leg to remind me 
that I spent Two Years in Hell. 

Your chum, 

Bob. 



THE RED, RED ROAD TO HOOGE 

You're on parade, go get your spade, 
Fall in, the shovel and pick brigade, 
There's a carry fatigue, for half a league, 
And work to do with the spade. 
Through the dust and ruins of Ypres town 
The seventeen-ineh still battering down, 
Spewing death with its fiery breath, 
On the red, red road to Hooge. 

"Who is the one whose time has come. 
Who won't return when the work is done, 
Who'll leave his bones on the blood-stained 

stones 
Of the red, red road to Hooge? 
To the sandbagged trenches and over the top, 
Over the top if a packet you stop 
On the red, red road to Hooge. 

The burst and roar of the hand grenade 
Welcome us to the "death parade," 
The bit of gloom and valley of doom, 
The crater down at Hooge. 
Full many a soldier from the Rhine 
Must sleep tonight in a bed of lime — 
'Tis a pitiless grave for brave and knave, 
Is the crater down at Hooge. 
292 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 293 

Hark to the "stand-to" fusillade, 
Sling your rifles, go get your spade, 
And spade away ere the break of day, 
Or a hole you'll fill at Hooge. 
CaU the roll, and another name 
Is sent to swell the roU of fame, 
So we carve a cross to mark a loss, 
Of a chum who fell at Hooge. 

Not a deed for a paper man to write, 

No glorious charge in the dawning light. 

The ** Daily Mail" won't teU the tale 

Of the night work out at Hooge. 

But our General knows, and his praise we've 

won, 
He's pleased with the work the Canadians have 

done, 
In shot and shell at the mouth of hell, 
On the red, red road to Hooge. 

"THE IRON SIXTH" 

(6th Brigade, 2nd Canadians, 27th, 28th, 29th, 
and 31st Battalions) 

Canada's Golden Gateway sent forth her gallant sons, 

Who proudly marched with smile and song to face the 
German guns; 

Where'er their duty called them 'twas there they won 
their fame, 

And on the Scroll of Honour is the "Twenty- 
Seventh's" name. 



294 INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 

Yet farther west, and still her sons is Canada sending 

out: 
The "Twenty-Eighth" Battalion fights with never 

a fear or doubt; 
From the head of Lake Superior and the Province of 

Golden Wheat 
The boys are marching 'gainst the foe with never 

fait 'ring feet. 

B. C. has sent her quota, and the "Twenty-Ninth" 

is there, 
Broad-chested, stalwart manhood, just out to do and 

dare ; 
Vancouver's boys are marching with steady step and 

true, 
Determined all to play the game and see the whole 

thing through. 

A breath from Calgary's city, flung where the fight 

is worst — 
Still more of Canada's manhood is the gallant 

"Thirty-First." 
From prairieland and city they answered to the call, 
And bravely shouldered rifle lest their Empire's 

honour fall. 

From Winnipeg's Golden Gateway to Vancouver's 

rainy shore, 
Come Canada's sons to keep the flag of Empire to the 

fore; 



INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH 295 

From Kemmil down to Ypres, go when and where 

you will, 
The "IRON SIXTH" have paid their toll, and are 

bravely paying still. 

Canada, Canada ! the Pride of all the West, 
We'll fight for thee, we'll die for thee, so that our 

Homeland be 
The Bounteous land, the glorious land. 
Forever of the free. 

Walter T. H. Grippe. 
28th (N.W.) Battalion, 
June 12th, 1916. 



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